The Problem With Statistics

The interesting thing about geocaching statistics is that when your cache finds are presented to you in a particular way, you suddenly find yourself with completely new geocaching goals you likely would never have come up with otherwise. What do I mean by that? Take for example, "Most Consecutive Months With a FTF", one of many  somewhat obscure statistics generated from the GSAK macro, "FindStatGen". Certainly not a statistic I would have derived on my own, but once I saw it on my computer screen, I suddenly became obsessed with keeping that streak going (I'm up to 19 consecutive months and counting).

And take the nice calendar of finds available on your geocaching.com stats page. Again, something I would have never even dreamed of keeping track of, but now that it's there in black and white (so to speak), I've gone ahead and entered all my "missing days" in my personal (Google) calendar to make sure that I'll drop everything to find a cache on those days. I don't even know if there is a challenge cache for filling in your calendar - I'm just obsessed with wanting to see 366 days filled in on my computer screen:

That's right, I said 366 days. That's because it includes February 29th, which, as you know, only comes around every 4 years. And you can bet that I, and all the other calendar-watching cachers out there, are not going to let Feb. 29th, 2012 pass by with out getting a smiley.

Cache On!

Best of Both Worlds

When OpenCaching first launched several weeks ago, there was some heated debate in the geocaching world as to how this new service may, or may not, impact Geocaching.com. A lot of the early intensity of those discussions seems to have simmered down somewhat recently, as most people realize they can live peacefully in a world with more than one geocaching listing service.

For those of you who are ready to bury the hatchet and move on, there is a very nice GSAK macro available that allows you to pull data from opencaching.com into your GSAK database. It is called OpencachingGarmin.gsk, and was written by one of my favorite macro developers, "hynr".

The macro works great and runs quickly. By default, it will use your designated home location and pull all the caches within a specified grid into the GSAK database of your choice. You can modify any of these input variables, including the number of caches that you download from the site:

If you load the OpenCaching caches into the same GSAK database containing your geocaching.com caches, you can distinguish between the two by the Code name: geocaching.com caches begin with "GC", whereas opencaching.com caches begin with "OX". In addition, opencaching.com caches do not contain the State location, so in the GSAK State field they will be listed as, "Nil". Once you have all the caches you want from both services in GSAK, you simply load them all onto your GPSr as you normally would (see this help file), and you're good to go.

Cache On!

Going Mobile

This blog is now mobile-friendly, which means when you access The Geocaching Journal from your smartphone, blog intelligence will kick in and detect whether you are opening the site on a desktop or mobile device, and then display the appropriate version of this blog. So now when you are out geocaching and need some reading material to keep you occupied between caches, you have direct access to all the bloggy goodness of this site. Give it a whirl.

In other blog-related news, this particular publication has been nominated for a "2011 Golden Retrevo Award" award by the good people at the consumer electronics site, Retrevo. But it's up to you, my faithful readers, to determine whether I win or lose this award, by casting (or not) your votes. So, if you like this blog and feel it's worthy, please take a second to vote by either clicking this link, or on the button in the upper right-hand corner. And unlike voting policies in most countries, you can vote early and vote often (up to once per day) if you are so inclined.

Thank you for your support, and as always,

Cache On!

Happy New Year

Just wanted to wish all of my faithful blog readers a happy, healthy, and cache-rich 2011!

While my caching productivity dropped somewhat in 2010 (as life and other things got in the way), I was at least able to end the year with a bang instead of a whimper. On new year's eve, I found 24 caches, including one FTF, and another cache that was hidden way back in the year 2000. The 24 finds was key, as I was able to finish the year off with exactly 365 finds:

But beyond just the numbers, the best part was the trip itself, and the company. My caching buddy, the always jovial "Rohrerboy", and I headed up Highway 1 along the rugged California coast in Sonoma county. It is such gorgeous country here, that cache finds or not, it's impossible not to enjoy yourself in this part of the world. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't ideal on this particular day - extremely cold and cloudy. But the sun did come out briefly late in the afternoon, allowing me to get this shot, which should give you a sense of how beautiful it is here:

Again, Happy New Year to all, and I hope 2011 holds lots of wonderful caching adventures for everyone.

Cache On!

Geocaching.com Delivers

Well, we knew it was coming, and now (most of) it is here.

Statistics
You can now view a nice selection of statistics related to your cache finds, including your finds per day, finds per month, and finds for each day of the year. I like how your stat page updates as soon as you log a new find.

Favorites
This is a nice feature that lets you label any cache as one of your favorites. For every 10 caches you find, you are allowed to "favorite" 1 cache. What I really like is that you can sort a list of caches from "most favorited" to least (by clicking on the blue ribbon). I found a cache in my area that has already received 34 favorite votes, and turns out to be one of the most popular caches in the world. Before now, I never even knew it existed.

Better Mapping
The new mapping tool is still in beta, but is accessible through the regular gc.com mapping page. It really does scroll much faster than the current version, and can display an unlimited number of caches. But the best part is the number of different map types available including all the traditional road, terrain and satellite views, but also options for viewing OpenStreet Maps, OpenCycle Maps, and Bing Maps. The only thing missing (for now) is the ability to turn on and off caches you own or have already found.

Sweet! Cache On!

Tis The Season

I suspect this post won't generate the lively discussion that my last post did.

Even so, you may be interested to learn that geocaching.com has some nice holiday upgrades in store for us in the near future. First, as you've probably heard, Groundspeak acquired mygeocachingprofile.com, a great website for creating all sorts of statistics, graphs and maps based on your caching finds. As a result, we should expect to start seeing find statistics in our geocaching.com profiles soon.

In addition, a new and improved geocaching.com mapping tool is in the works that will display an infinite number of caches (not limited to 500), and scroll more smoothly.

Finally, geocaching.com will give users the ability to rate caches.

You can read about these changes in detail over on Firennice's (a geocaching.com reviewer) blog post.

Enjoy the holidays, and the changes in store for us in 2011.

Cache On!

Geocaching Smackdown

Lots of buzz on the interwebz last week surrounding the launch of Garmin's new geocaching website, opencaching.com; not to be confused with opencaching.us (a completely separate geocaching listing service that just launched back in October). Accompanying Garmin's geocaching site launch was this blog post which explains what geocaching is, and then goes on to describe what you can do on their new site. Without mentioning Groundspeak or geocaching.com, the folks at Garmin cleverly highlight the two features that opencaching.com offers which geocaching.com does not - the ability to rate caches ("awesomeness scale"), and the fact that there is no premium membership fee - it's free, in other words.

   VS.  

A lot of people seem to think, at least based on what I saw on Twitter last week, that this new effort by Garmin could really cut into Groundspeak's market, or at least offer up some much-needed competition in the geocaching listing services world. Is this the beginning of the end for gecoaching.com? Read on as I discuss the good, the bad and the ugly of Garmin's new service.

The Good
(1) The User Interface
The site is very clean, intuitive and easy to use. The opening page calculates your current location and puts it right in the search box for you. You can accept it, or change it, and click on the big “Search” button to immediately generate a map (using Bing Maps) of all the caches surrounding that location. Two buttons at the bottom of the map allow you to either send the displayed caches directly to your GPS device or download them as a GPX file.

(2) Open Application Programming Interface (API)
This provides developers the ability to create clever applications using information from the cache listing database. I suspect it will only be a matter of time before some clever programmer creates a GSAK-type of program for oc.com. Geocaching.com has also announced plans to open up their API as well.

(3) The Price
Free. Enough said.

The Bad
(1) The Fate of OpenCaching.us.
A lot of people see this as a battle between gc.com and oc.com. I don’t. Not yet anyway. Instead, I see this as more of a detriment to opencaching.us; another open source cache listing service with no commercial ties (truly free). Which is really too bad, as that site also has a great user interface, and a wonderful, built-in cache search, filter, and download tool. Where were all of the open caching supporters, who have suddenly jumped on the Garmin bandwagon, three months ago when oc.us launched? There’s no way opencaching.us can compete with the Garmin PR juggernaut. Was Garmin’s choice for their webiste name merely just a coincidence?

(2) Limited Cache Types
Only Traditionals, Multis and Puzzles available here. Where are the EarthCaches and Event Caches?

(3) Trackables?
So far, no support for Travel Bugs or GeoCoins.

(4) Mobile Apps?
Will there be an iPhone or Android app.? I guess we'll have to wait for someone to delve into the API, because as of now, Garmin doesn't seem anxious to support mobile devices (other than their own, of course).

(5) It’s Still In Beta
This is both good and bad. Bad in the sense that there are still a lot of bugs, as a quick visit to the forums will reveal. And good in that there is acknowledged room, and plans, for improvement.

The Ugly
(1)No Reviewers
The nice thing about geocachinig.com is that there is an army of dedicated voulnuteers who must pre-approve any cache hide before it gets listed. That's not the case with oc.com, and I've already heard stories about caches literally being placed on top of each other.

(2)Maintaining Multiple Data Sets
To quote Liz Lemon, "It's a deal breaker, ladies". This is the same problem I had with some of the other cache listing services, such as Navicache, Terracaching, and sadly, opencaching.us.  I'm just too lazy to maintain my cache finds and hides on more than one listing service. It's too much work to keep everything up-to-date and synchronized (9 out of 10 DBA's would agree). 


I admit that it is nice how easy oc.com makes it to upload your hides and finds from "those other services", but even so, it's still extra work. In addition, every cacher on geocaching.com would have to be vigilant about keeping their data up-to-date on oc.com to make it worthwhile. Otherwise, you'll never have a true picture as to how many caches are really in any given area unless you check both services every time you go caching. 


And even for the caches that are listed on both services, the number of finds would never be accurate unless every person who found a given cache logged it on both sites. For example, a cache called, "My First "Regular" Cache", near San Ramon, California is listed on both sites. On geocaching.com it's listed as GC18QYA, and shows 49 people have found it. But on opencaching.com, it's listed as OX18QYA, and shows only 2 people have found it. 


And finally, many of us have invested way too much time and energy into maintaining our geocaching stats from geocaching.com, and we're not about to even try and duplicate that effort on another site.


The Bottom Line
New cachers may be drawn to opencaching.com initially, especially those buying their first Garmin GPS receivers, who may be “gently persuaded” to visit the site. But I can't see the  millions of cachers on geocaching.com switching to oc.com, or even spending the time required  to use both services. Competition is good, but duplication of effort is bad.

Full Disclosure: This may sound like I’m staunchly anti-Garmin and basically a grumpy old man who doesn’t like change. Nothing could be further from the truth (well, the anti-Garmin part isn't true, anyway). My first GPS receiver was a Garmin GPS 12 which I got before geocaching was even invented, and I absolutely adored; up until a bike accident put it out of commission. My next GPSr, after a lot of research (and saving up), was a Garmin GPSMAP 60CSx, which I now wonder how I ever lived without. If it ever breaks (or more likely, I break it), I will likely turn right around and buy another. If not a 60CSx, definitely another Garmin. If it weren’t for Garmin, I probably wouldn’t be geocaching.


Cache On!