Lots Of Ways To Learn About Geocaching

There is plenty of great information about geocaching out there on the interwebs these days, and I try to maintain links to much of it along the right-hand column of this blog space. And while there is a plethora of great written material on the subject, sometimes I am just too dang tired to read about our favorite hobby.

That's where podcasts come in. The beauty of these audio files is you can listen to them whenever it's convenient: at home on your computer, or on the go with your favorite mp3 player. And there are some good sources of geocaching podcasts out there. My three favorites are:

The PodCacher
The original geocaching podcast show and still going strong, Sonny and Sandy continue to bring the latest news, tips and tricks, and a bit of humor to their weekly show.

Cache-A-Maniacs
In their own words, "Each episode of the Cache-A-Maniacs features a candid, uncut, and irregular interview with a member of the Geocaching community." They've had some great interviews over the years with a number of geocachers, and each one brings a nice, unique perspective.

The Geocaching Podcast
This is a little different than the others in that it is not exactly a pre-recorded podcast, but rather a weekly audio show recorded live on Tuesday nights at 9:30 PM EST. The team discusses all the latest geocaching news and information, and you can tune in live each week, or download the recorded discussions afterward. During their last talk show, they interviewed Jeremy Irish and "moun10bike" from Groundspeak. The audio file from that episode will be available for download on Tuesday, March 30.

But what if you'd rather just watch shows about geocaching rather than listen? Well, you can always search YouTube for geocaching videos, where you have your pick from many thousands of offerings.

Cache On!

What Is Geocaching?

In case you haven't visited the main geocaching.com page recently, you may have missed the new, "What Is Geocaching" video. This is great. Normally, whenever I try to explain my obsession, err, I mean hobby, to my friends or family, I inevitably end up getting confused, blank stares in return for my trouble. Now all I have to do is point them to this video:



This explains it in terms that even my great Uncle Mortimer can understand.

Cache On!

Whibbit, Whibbit

It appears Groundspeak is working on a new application that integrates social networking (aka, Facebook and Twitter) with geocaching.com, called "Whibbit". What is Whibbit? Good question. All I know is what I saw posted on Facebook recently by Jeremy Irish of Groundspeak:

Jeremy Irish "Thanks to the folks playing around with the Whibbit.com web site. It is in "alpha" so we're interested in feedback via uservoice (the feedback link on the site). if you have a question you can share the link with your friends to have them answer questions. It is very early stage so be gentle :)"

 And then this post...

Jeremy Irish "

For the geocachers, we're using this as a testbed for social networking integration for Geocaching.com as well. We'll have more Facebook and Twitter integration with Geocaching.com in the near future."

And a few hours later, this post...

Jeremy Irish "

Thanks everyone for the early test. We're shutting down the early alpha for now. We'll check into the errors and get a more informative "what is Whibbit" page online to better explain the service. I may ask a couple of you to re-test before we re-release the code (if you don't mind). The nice thing about checking Facebook integration on Whibbit first is that we can work out the kinks before testing it with all of our million close friends at Geocaching.com :)"

And then finally, this post in response to a question from a Facebook friend:

Jeremy Irish 

@Stuart - Whibbit is the who what when where and why of questions. Ergo, the name. Think outside the box, mister.

So it appears I missed the alpha testing of this new service while I was asleep (darned daylight savings time). We'll have to keep our eyes on Whibbit.com (which currently just shows a picture of a big-mouthed frog), and on Jeremy's Facebook posts to learn more.

Cache On!

10th Anniversary & 1 Million Caches

As we move ever so close to seeing the placement of geocache #1,000,000...

.... it also appears that details are starting to emerge about plans for geocaching.com's 10^th anniversary celebration. According to the last Groundspeak newsletter, there are "many plans in the works to celebrate this occasion. We're not announcing them all just yet, but we do want to share one particularly exciting one, since you may be trying to schedule travel for the upcoming months."


"On Sunday, July 4, we are hosting a party in the streets outside of Groundspeak HQ! More details will be announced in May, but we wanted to give you all a heads up."


So if you happen to be in Seattle on July 4th, this would be one event cache not to miss.


Cache On!

Getting Your Garmin To Go Off-Road

Have you ever run into a situation where you've been hiking or biking along a trail, but your Garmin GPS device shows your location as being on the nearest road instead? The Garmin GPSmap 60CSx (and presumably other Garmin models) are set, by default, to "Lock On Road" on the Map Page. So even if you are traveling off-road, your Garmin will try to set your position on the nearest road in the street network loaded into your device.

You can easily fix this problem by setting "Lock On Road" to "Off". This is done by going to the Map Page, hitting the Menu button, and selecting "Setup Map". This takes you to the map setup page where you can change the setting from "On" to "Off":

Now you should be good to go.

Cache On!

Going Down & Gearing Up

On Tuesday, February 23rd starting at 8 PM Pacific Time (GMT -8), the geocaching.com web site will be down in order to perform upgrades to the Geocaching.com database server in preparation for the increase in Geocaching over the spring and summer months.

The expected downtime for this work is 4 hours and during that time, all Geocaching.com services including the web site, Pocket Queries, the Geocaching iPhone application, Geocache Navigator, and other 3rd party applications that access our API, will be inaccessible.

Groundspeak will have a webpage set up on the Geocaching site with this downtime notice and they'll provide status updates if the downtime exceeds the 4 hour maintenance window.


So make sure you run all your pocket queries and get any other information you need prior to this maintenance period.


Cache On!

Mark Travel Bugs Missing

If you received, and read, your Groundspeak Weekly Newsletter this week, then you learned that you can now mark trackable items as missing - a feature, in my opinion, that is long overdue. Geocaching.com now gives both trackable item owners and cache owners the ability to remove trackable items from the cache listing right from the trackable item's details page:

Instructions on how to do this can be found in the Groundspeak Knowledge Book. Once you select "Go", it will show the Travel Bug or Geocoin as being recently spotted in an "Unknown Location":

Later, if the Travel Bug is found elsewhere, it can be grabbed by the geocacher and placed in the correct location.

This is a nice feature, and I'm glad to see it is available.

Cache On!