TAG :: Toronto Area Geocachers » geocaching.com
Apr 04 2011
Groundspeak’s Geocaching App
Over the weekend, Groundspeak launched an update to their Windows Phone 7 app. From their forum post, here’s the details:
Greetings!
Below is a list of updates for version 2.2 of the Geocaching for Windows Phone 7 Application. Given the scope of changes in this release it is recommended you reinstall the application and powercycle your device.
New features:
- Mark and navigate to new waypoints from within the app (helpful when seeking Multi-caches)
- Option in settings to allow the application to run under the lock screen
- Quickly download Pocket Queries in batches of 10, 20, or 30 caches to save time or limit data usage
- Italian and French language support
Bug fixes:
- Enhanced stability and addressed connection errors
- The compass now works with offline caches
- Application state now persists when you exit the app (this was an issue particularly with viewing PQs)
[ Geocaching on Windows Phone 7 ]
Mar 27 2011
Here’s an interesting Head’s Up from Greywynd. Parks Canada is planning a Geocaching event along the Trent-Severn waterway on July 16. We don’t have much details at this point, other than a “mark the date”. It’s great to see some Parks Canada love for Central Ontario after the geocaching love seen in the Atlantic Provinces (Fundy NP, Louisbourg NP, Cape Breton Highlands NP) and more recently British Colombia (Gulf Islands NP) has been getting some official Parks Canada geocache support. Oh, and this one could be featuring the Passport idea where you visit caches, get stamps and earn a geocoin for your efforts too.
So, if you can be in the Peterborough area on July 16, make a point to come on out and show Parks Canada that we love caching in Ontario’s National Parks too.
Mar 08 2011
Well, after a few months of huge, earth shattering changes at Groundspeak’s Geocaching.com site, we are treated to a March update that’s in like a lamb. This month, the devs have “circled around” to patch up some bugs, and add a bit of marketing material to the site.
They added some video clips to the site under the “videos” tab, and they have added a handy-dandy intro to geocaching presentation that can be downloaded for your group’s next Geocaching 101 event. Note they don’t want people modifying that presentation except to add/remove their organization’s logo or drop the video.
Another useful feature is that your stored (not active) Pocket Queries increases from 40 to 1,000. That should cover just about anyone – particularly those of you who make PQs for common tasks/trips that you don’t run weekly.
Some of the other updates include:
24401: Move Lost & Found videos onto a new video page
Added new Video page and link in left-hand navigation23911: Adding Norwegian Bokmal to geocaching.com
Added translations24829: Adding Estonian Language to geocaching.com
Added translations25140: Default map view is home location, if set
Beta map will now default to home coordinates or Seattle if not chosen25229: Remove inactive PQ limitation from PQ Page
Increased maximum saved PQs to 100023026: Addition of “Intro to Geocaching” Presentation to Resources Section
Download a slide presentation for use when teaching others about Geocaching25244: Create Counties for Hungary
Added 19 counties including the capitol
[ March 2011 Release Notes (Groundspeak Forums) ]
Feb 23 2011
Just got this in my weekly Groundspeak newsletter. It’s now official, the Lackeys will be coming to Spring Fling again so there’s one more reason to attend the event. If you’re heading over to Allegany State Park Geobash in New York state, you’ll also have an opportunity to meet them there – and of course they’ll be at Geowoodstock.
That’s three chances to meet a Lackey this year, all within a 3 hour drive of Toronto.
— Below is Groundspeak’s Announcement —
Groundspeak Lackeys to Attend Mega-Events in Eight Countries
Groundspeak Lackeys are traveling thousands of miles from H.Q. this year to share smiles, shake hands and make geocaching memories at more than a dozen Mega-Events worldwide. We’d love to meet you and to hear your geocaching stories! Come find a Lackey at one of these Mega-Events:
Illinois, USA – MOGA (Midwest Open Geocaching Adventure)
Bussum, Netherlands – Geocaching Multi Event 2011
Oeiras, Portugal – 11 Years! Oeiras – Portugal
New York, USA – ASP GeoBash 6
Ontario, Canada – COG Spring Fling
Salzburg, Austria – Pinzgau 2011
Pennsylvania, USA – GeoWoodstock IX
Ohio, USA – Midwest Geobash
Wales, UK – Mega Wales 2011
Wisconsin, USA – West Bend $1000 Cache Ba$h
HQ in Washington State, USA – Groundspeak Block Party
Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany – Geocoinfest Europa
Catalunya, Spain – Mega Event Catalunya
South Carolina, USA – Geocoinfest
We hope to attend even more Mega-Events next year!
Feb 17 2011
It’s been 10 years since GC2B4 – Deer Bait was placed in Short Hills Provincial Park, down Niagara way. It is one of the few geocaches that exist in Ontario’s Provincial Parks system due to the ban on physical caches implemented in 2005 by Ontario Parks. Deer Bait is Ontario’s oldest active geocache, and in the last 10 years 348 geocaching teams have found it. The cache itself is a basic traditional, a pleasant walk along the trail in a natural park. The above photo shows the cache and logbook (opened to a page from 2004).
Tonight, Cachedrone is holding an event cache to mark this milestone – GC2MR0A Deer Bait – 10th Anniversary. If you’ve got the time, pop down to Fonthill and share stories with other cachers. The event itself is being held at The Mouse Trap, which is located at 128 Regional 20 Rd East in Pelham/Fonthill (905-892-7857)
[ GC2B4 Deer Bait ] [ GC2MR0A Deer Bait – 10th Anniversary ]
Feb 03 2011
The Geocaching.com February update also brings much goodness to the beta maps. Version 0.9.2 adds some personalization and filter abilities, and thus adds considerable value to the new maps.
As a reminder, the new beta maps enable you to view as many caches as you’d like plotted on the screen. You can view all the caches in the world if you’d like – you’re not limited to 500 caches at a time like the old maps. Up to now though that was about all you could do. The tool wasn’t useful for planning caching outings within your normal areas, since you could not hide the caches you owned or found:
With version 0.92, you have additional controls now. You’ll see there are filters on the left hand side, that let you toggle certain cache types on or off. To show the caches you have already found, or placed – you select that “Enable Personalization” check box about half way down the screen :
This shows all your finds, and caches placed. Pretty, but not much use for planning that power caching run. Let’s hide all those smileys and see where to cache this weekend. Click on the Smiley Face icon and the Star icon under personalization and I can see Terra Cotta might be a nice spot to check out:
What’s more, our friends at Groundspeak are not quite done yet! After this they are adding filters for Pocket Queries, trackables, and caches along a route. The Real-Time chat and Prescence items are interesting and may be coming from the Geocaching Live beta, though they’ll need to add these functions to the iPhone, Android and Windows Phone apps to get much traction in North America (and, it appears they are going to). Still, how cool would that be, to get a push notification that one of your geocaching friends is caching in the area…. or see geocachers plotted on the map screen (opt-in of course for those concerned with privacy)
Feb 02 2011
One of the updates that came out of yesterday’s Geocaching.com update is an upgrade to the Favourites feature. Now, you can see the percentage of finders against the number of finders who flagged a cache as a favourite. The intent is to show those caches which are being favourited, yet reflect that against the total number of finders. The hope is to show some measure of cache quality rather than just the raw number of cachers who flagged the cache. One caveat to this is that Favourite points can only be assigned by a Premium Member, so the ratio calculation ignores Basic Members in the calculation.
Since this calculation is a bit intensive on the site, we cannot sort by caches with a higher ratio. To see the Favourite Ratio, you have two methods:
- On the cache page, click on the little arrow below the favourite count to see the ratio, and who favourited that cache
- In a list of caches, like a search, click on the number of favourites to see the ratio pop out.
Jan 31 2011
Looks like it’s maintenance mode time again at Geocaching.com. Tomorrow, the site will go offline for it’s monthly site update and come back shortly with new features, changes and fixes. The site will go offline at 1PM EST, and these things usually last a good hour or two. During the maintenance window, you won’t be able to log caches or look them up. If you want to cache in tomorrow’s snowstorm, better grab a Pocket Query beforehand.
One of the updates I am expecting to see, based on the UserVoice feedback is the addition of “Favourite Ratios”, where you can display a cache’s favourite count against the number of Premium Members who found that cache.
Jan 18 2011
…. and the Geocaching.com update train keeps on rolling. This one is for geocachers who cache with a Windows Phone 7 device. This one is a little different – they updated the site instead of the App for these fixes, so you don’t need to run out and download anything.
The forum post says it all:
Bug Fixes:
* “Hide my finds” now only hides you’ve logged as “Found”.
* Log in issues have been corrected.
* Pocket Queries are working.
* Connection issues have been resolved.
* Archived caches no longer show up in searches.
Jan 17 2011
Here’s a little something we missed a few days ago (January 12th) – Groundspeak’s official Geocaching App for Android was updated to 1.1.3.
You can now upload photos with your logs and select motion based compass.
From the Geocaching.com forum post, here’s what changed:
Android v1.1.3 has been released!
New Features:
* Upload photos with logs.* Log manager to edit pending logs and view sent logs.
* Motion based compass is now an available option.
* Create, edit, delete, and select waypoints from the compass.
Bug Fixes:
* Fixed an issue that was causing erratic compass behavior.* Behind the scenes improvements.