TAG :: Toronto Area Geocachers » update
Mar 15 2011
PiGo, our favourite iPhone app for visiting Wherigo caches (and Wherigo adventures) got a minor update last night. Notable improvements include auto-saving timing, and improved compatibility for cartridges. One of the fixes includes improved support for CurrentDistance and CurrentBearing functions [Source: Earwigo WWB Developer List]
[ PiGo (iTunes) ]
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 14 2011
Last week, Garmin issued an update to their Basecamp Product. This update addresses recent changes to the .LOC file format, and some bugfixes. Basecamp is a free product that works with Garmin’s line of GPS units.
- Added support for handling changes to LOC file format.
- Improved error handling for various map issues.
- Improved error handling for overlay issues.
- Changed default name of BirdsEye Imagery created from other user data to reflect name of selected item.
- Fixed issue where the basemap from the GPSMAP 78s was not displayed.
- Fixed issue where Topo Australia map was not displayed.
- Fixed issue where the Worldwide Aviation Basemap was not displayed correctly.
- Fixed issue with changing selection after removing waypoint from route.
- Fixed issue with deleting routes that span the Anti-Meridian.
[ Garmin Basecamp ]
Feb 03 2011
As of February 1st, Opencaching.com has resolved one issue that has been producing a lot of complaints about the new service …. namely the ability for cache owners and/or visitors to delete logs. Now you’ll see a little “Delete” button on the log list and it will make that disappear.
As posted by Trailtech on the Opencaching.com forums:
We just added the ability to delete logs. You can delete them form the cache page if you are the cache owner, or if it is your log.
The logs now show the ratings that the logger gave to the cache and have icons for the different types of logs.
The layout of the cache page has been updated to make it easier to find the most important information (for example the cache type icon is now much larger).
We will be adding the ability to edit logs soon.
Please let us know if you have any problems using these new features.
They still have some improvements to make regarding log editing, but you can at least delete the log and start over as a workaround for now.
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 22 2011
Garmin has released new firmware for the Colorado series, putting the current version at 3.60. This appears to be a rebrand of the 3.52 beta as there are no noticable changes between the beta and this final release.
Changes made from version 3.50 to 3.60:
* Added support for chirp™ detection. This software update will allow Colorado units to detect previously-programmed chirp™ units. See http://www.garmin.com/chirp for details on which units are chirp™ compatible. NOTE: Due to the hardware present in Colorado devices, chirp™ detection range may be less than that of other compatible devices. * Updated magnetic Earth field data. * Fixed issue with certain JPEGs not drawing from Custom Maps. * Fixed issue with Oblique Mercator User Grid distances.
* Fixed line color when navigating a track off-road.
[ Colorado 3.60 Firmware ]
Jan 21 2011
Garmin has released an update to their POI loader software for Windows. This software lets you take locations and add them as “Points of Interest” to compatible GPS units. Most modern Garmin devices support this feature. While these “Custom POI’s” are not editable on your device, it does allow you to load many, many more locations on the device than the Waypoints or Geocaches feature does. For example, in the image above I used POI loader to put 21,000 geocaches on my Nuvi 265. With this latest update, Garmin addresses a couple sore spots like file names and large GPX file loading problems.
[ Garmin POI Loader 2.60 ]
- Added ability to specify a custom POI file’s name
- Added ability to handle swapped lat and lon values in CSV files
- Fixed issue with multi-line CSV files not being read correctly
- Fixed issue with extended ASCII characters in CSV files
- Fixed issue with reading large gpx and csv files making the application unresponsive
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.