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Post by SSO JOAT on Feb 12, 2014 21:38:09 GMT -9
Was just looking over the new Garmin GPSMap 64s model that has come out and I see that their sales literature no longer mentions opencaching, but once again refers to geocaching.com as the place to go for geocaching data. The unit comes pre-loaded with 250,000 geocaches in the USA, though it doesn't specify what caches those might be. I would hope and expect that they are a highly rated cross-section from around the country. But it is very interesting to see that Garmin may have gotten over being so mad at Groundspeak over their lack of promotion of Garmin products a couple years back.
It also looks like Garmin's OC site pretty much fizzled out on any further expansion (at least in Alaska). I tried to play with it a little bit after it got up and running, but the "community review" aspect makes it extremely difficult to get a cache published on OC. Funny, because the primary complaint by GC folks at the beginning was that OC would become a run-away sess pool of bad caches. It has been the opposite with the community review process as there is a large group of people who seem to do nothing but scroll through the cache publishing proposals and deny every listing that has so much as a hair out of place. It only takes a simple majority of public (and anonymous) rejections to get a cache listing denied on the OC. So the community self-regulation concept appears to have worked out to be much more strict that folks had anticipated.
I don't mind OC gradually going away, but I do hope that Garmin and Groundspeak can stay on speaking terms henceforth.
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Post by NeverSummer on Feb 13, 2014 16:25:03 GMT -9
There was some discussion on the Groundspeak forums about this, and I'm interested to see whose caches are loaded on the units.
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Post by akgh519 on Feb 13, 2014 17:09:57 GMT -9
I would bet it will be ones with favorite points...
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Post by freeweez on Feb 13, 2014 18:50:19 GMT -9
I'm getting pretty frustrated with the Geocache website lately. I am totally unable to download caches to my Magellan GPS! Both computers which have always worked for the download....no longer work. On both computers I have downloaded the MiTac numerous, numerous times! Then restarted the computer. Re-logged in. Re-attached my GPS....and nothing! Nothing!! Can anyone shed some light on why Geocaching will not transfer the file to my GPS? Please help...if you can! Geocache.com is not my friend for the last month or so!!! Thanks very much!!!! Or---please e/m me at: lekempker@uaa.Alaska.edu.
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Post by alaskacariboozer on Feb 13, 2014 20:44:40 GMT -9
Freeweez, I encountered this issue with my garmin and found that my browser was the issue. I switched from internet explorer to google chrome, and the problem went away. Do you have google chrome or another browser in your computer? Try that. I'd bet a smiley that the it'll work:)
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Post by akgh519 on Feb 13, 2014 21:00:13 GMT -9
I had the same problem using explorer recently. I was able to find a fix in the forums. It is the browser. To fix it, Go to Tools, Compatibility View settings. Enter geocaching.com where it says 'add this website' and then hit 'add' and it should work after that. This fixed it for me. Good Luck!
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Post by SSO JOAT on Feb 14, 2014 0:11:14 GMT -9
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Post by GreatlandReviewer on Feb 14, 2014 15:45:02 GMT -9
The 250,000 geocaches represent about a 10% sampling of all worldwide geocaches. They were selected in an attempt to give most purchasers an "out of the box" opportunity to search for and find a geocache. Generally, areas with higher cache densities will have more caches preloaded in the GPS. As with the GeoMate, caches with low D/T ratings (not necessarily highly favorited since favorite point assignment varies so widely from region to region) to give first time seekers a positive first-find experience are well-represented. Whether OpenCaching and Opie live on is up to Garmin. Anyway, Signal and Opie have made up and are back to fishing in the same pond.
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Post by SSO JOAT on Feb 15, 2014 18:56:08 GMT -9
A worldwide sampling in a Garmin that can't be exported from the USA without license doesn't seem very meaningful. Unless they have done something to alter their export restrictions. I know they sell European models on the other side of the pond. It would seem that a separate 250,000 cache set would be preloaded into the different regional units for the most benefit.
It would be really interesting to see how they picked the caches. If I were tackling such a project, I'm pretty sure I would set the GSAK filters to find traditional caches with a D/T of probably 2/2 or less (maybe even 1.5/1.5 if that returned too many) in regular or large size that have zero DNFs, no NM logs, have been in place for at least a year and have a fairly high find count (probably start filtering with 20+ finds and see where it goes). My gut says that even with those very restrictive figures, you'd end up with more than 250,000. But it would be quite a task to try and pull enough PQs into someone's GSAK to even take a stab at such a filter on a national level. It's hard enough to just pull the state of Alaska. I can imagine it would take a week to pull data from a place like California; months to do the whole country. Of course, the guys at Groundspeak have all that data to play with right at their fingertips. Must be nice.
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Post by freeweez on Feb 25, 2014 15:05:43 GMT -9
Thanks for the suggestions....am unable to use Google Chrome on my work computer--as it is not compatible with other programs we run. Have also tried Firefox...that works better for some things than others, it seems. Like the idea of messing with the compatibility settings...will try that next. Again--thanks for the tips, and glad to hear it's 'not just me'!!
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