This app will allow you to see geocaching news feeds from fellow geocachers, and full disclosure moment, this geocache blog is included. It’s a FREE app and was developed by a geocacher, which supports that this is a tool that can be used by us geocachers.

The link directly to Chico Valdez as the developer is here and to the store section is here.

As someone new to Ovi, I thought I’d investigate and was frankly impressed by some of the statistics out there:

Source: Nokia Ovi Store Forum

The Nokia Ovi Store has a Global reach of more than 190 countries, available in 30 languages and it is also adaptable to 135+ device models (not sure Apple can claim that)

And how much is it used? The statistics as at October 4th 2010 show:

• There are 2.5 million downloads a day with more 2.6 apps downloaded per visit
• Each active user is averaging 8.5 downloads per month
• Active users from more than 190 countries
• Games continue to be #1 for paid downloads and apps continue to be #1 for free downloads
• 90% of mobile consumers now have Ovi Store in their local language

Impressive stuff, and I am excited that a geocaching app is available on another platform.

What do you think? Are you aware of other geocaching apps and platforms that you’d recommend? I thought this one that was a geocache blog roll-up was a little different to the standard apps. I am happy to spotlight it here to share…

With this news, I had to find a new site for geocache statistics. Do I choose GSAK, GCStatistic, or My Geocaching Profile?

GSAK

This geocaching tool is used by a lot of people and I hear of it fondly from others to track their cache finds and create their geocaching statistics. But I’ve just never really got into the tool, it does not seem intuitive for me, and feels a bit old school.

GCStatistic

I went to the web site and it is freeware (always appreciated). But I had to download something to use it, which I don’t mind but if there is an option for a completely online model – I tend to prefer that. The geocaching statistics profile created looks decent as well. So may be in the future.

My Geocaching Profile

I went to the website and yes, it looks a bit cheesy, but its a free site and used by geocachers! I checked out the sample profile and it is very extensive and has different ways to look at your geocaching statistics that has now got me thinking….. For instance there is a “cache count by county” that I had never considered. And badges for people based on what they have achieved….like a FourSquare approach to entice you.

I went with the My Geocaching Profile for today and here are the results. Happy Geocaching!

Profile created using MyGeocachingProfile.com

Dogs can be great as helpful geocaching tools because:

1. They have great smell to sniff out the box underneath a rock
2. They have great hearing to alert you when a muggle is coming around the corner
3. They are man’s best friend so you can share in your delight when you find another geocache!

He’s only a puppy but as a terrier mix, he has bundles of energy and in 3 weeks we have yet to wear him out on a walk. So we decided to test his hiking and uphill skills out on Iron Mountain in San Diego.

This is a hike that many people take their dogs on, and indeed on Iron Mountain we saw over 30 dogs in 1 hour of all shapes and sizes. We asked if the little ones (dachshunds, yorkies…) had made it up and the owners all said “of course!!”

I ran the Iron Mountain Geocache Hall of Fame query and focused on the Iron Mountain side of the park…we managed to find 10 today including a puzzle (hooray for me and those Cryptogram puzzles). Congratulations to Watson the geodog on his first hike, completing 2 miles.

Here’s the link to the geocache if you want to solve and find it yourself. GCWGE1 Cryptogram

So how can you find what your geocaching statistics are? I use geocaching tools called It’s Not About the Numbers that is FREE. It walks you through the whole process, to go geocaching website, get your personal file, and the upload it. It allows you to export it through an HTML export that you can them copy to anywhere else you like – on your geocaching profile page, on a personal geocaching website or blog, like this one, or anything else you can think of.

Part of the geocaching tools that I like so much is the visual nature of what your geocaching statistics are. You can see the states or places across the world that you have been geocaching. I’ve gotten a few geocaches in Europe now, with Cyprus being a place I had great fun in.

You can also see the Combination grid of terrain and difficulty. This is my favorite thing to look at because I’d like to have at least one entry in each box. I tried for a 5/5 geocache a few weeks ago, but alas it was not to be. I’ll be back for that one though to get it included in my numbers.

The geocaching tools also includes the type of geocaches you have found and the size of the geocaches when you go geocaching. The most common type of geocache is the traditional geocache but I’ve tried to get a few different ones like the virtual or webcam versions.

So go ahead and see my geocaching statistics and try adding yours to your geocaching website. And maybe you’ll agree with me that It’s not just about the Numbers….

Stat Summary

Where I’ve Cached

Caching Milestones

 

Maps

Charts and Graphs

When you first enter the main website of geocaching, there are photos from users adventures posted right there. And every time you refresh the screen, you get a different set of photos. It’s very cool to know you will see what people around the world are doing in thier geocaching adventures…and that your photo could show up to someone else.

 I chose a random selection on photos shown….mainly the first one cracked me up with the random Japanese group. Could you imagine walking down the street and then seeing a bunch like this suddenly geocaching. The Geoacache muggles would look very confused…

I also just completed a geocache series about the Top 40 cachers in San Diego and it made me think – where am I on that list and what are my cache statistics?

Ran it through Geocache Statistics website and here are the results! (note – formatting is not great due to name change…it will catch up eventually)

Getting into the Top 1000 in California will be a great achievement!

So I thought I’d pull together a geocaching glossary with a few terms you’ll hear and see when in the world of geocaching and share in this geocache blog:

Cache - the short name for a geocache. It can refer to either the actual hide or the verb “I went caching today”

Logbook - this is the paper inside the geocache hide where you write your name and the date you found it. The geocaching logbook is how it is referred to or just shortened to ‘log’

Micro Geocache – just like the name suggests, this is a small hide. It’s usually about the size of a 35mm film cannister. The harder ones are NANO hides which are the size of your fingernail, magnetic, and REALLY hard to find. For me the hardest thing is getting out the log to sign it and then getting it back in.

Muggles - Yep, just like in Harry Potter, the people that don’t know about the magic of geocaching are called Muggles. Geocache hides that go missing are often said to have been ‘muggled’

TFTC – lots of acronyms to save you time and space on a log to write. This is “Thanks For The Cache”

TNLFSL- another common acronym. Geocaching etiquette is to take something and leave something in return. But if you did not take anything then you can write this acronym for “Took Nothing, Left Nothing, Signed Log”

TravelBug or TB or GeoCoins – a geocache hide stays in one place, but some people like to see their items go from hide to hide, so a TravelBug was created with a Tracking number that meant you could see it go around the world! The TBs often are coins – called GeoCoins. A standard TB is in the form of a dog tag. I once say a kid with a t-shirt who was tagged as a TravelBug. So really anything is possible.

Geosense – like a 6th sense but instead how you start to think like a geocacher whenever you are looking for a hide. Once you find a cache in a lampost, you’ll never look at them again, because you now have geosense. This is the hard when you start to learn how to geocache.

You can find more terminology listed at the Main Geocaching website in the glossary.

Here is the photo collage from a trip to Tucson geocaching in Arizona.

It was VERY HOT at 116 degrees at the hottest but always better for the heat then geocaching in the snow…

If you want to know more about how to use this geocaching tool – Here’s a link to a blog entry with some tips and tricks about the feature from Google Picasa

This geocache blog entry is a quick lovers guide for the best iphone geocaching app by GroundSpeak. I did a full review of 3 geocaching units – Garmin, Blackberry and the iPhone here.

I pull out my phone, load up the application, and search the local area, find one and go!

The developers are making updates on a regular basis and welcome feedback in the geocache iphone forum

For instance, they added the ability to post the log file directly to the website and not store it as a field note, meaning you needed to take an extra trip to the web site.

This is soooo worth the $9.95!! Read more at official geocaching website

Summary

• Garmin Colorado 400t Unit the foundational tool for geocachers with great GPS accuracy, hide information, and fantastic features like “turn by turn driving directions to your next geocache”, but requires uploading queries and downloading finds that add an extra step the wireless devices no longer need. I still would take this one out for when I know I’m going geocaching (weekends, vacations…)
• Blackberry Trimble Geocache Navigator Application if you have the blackberry, worth adding this for those “wonder if there are any geocaches around here” moments. But as any wireless device – depends on being in an area where there is a signal. It does upload the log information straight away vs. just posting a field note which is what the iPhone does.
• iPhone Groundspeak Geocaching Application same comment as Blackberry for those ”wonder if there are any geocaches around here” moments and signal issues. But this is made by Geocaching.com and has some offline capabilities that makes this better for me than the Blackberry app.

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Garmin Colorado 400t

Here’s the link to Garmin’s store about this tool.

COST $599

I bought this one when I started geocaching just over 1 year ago. It was the newest release at that time and had special features for geocaching – like including the hints and the past 5 logs automatically.

When I bought the driving maps in addition (yes, that’s how they make money) for a trip to Europe – I discovered a whole new fantastic aspect of the Garmin tool for Geocaching. The “we’ll give you turn by turn driving instructions to get to your next cache” feature. This stopped a lot of those navigating arguments straight away and made geocaching so much more fun when we were driving to areas of geocaches….

as I get more experienced and use wireless devices, this tool will start to get outdated. I don’t want to have to spend the time and steps I do now. Mainly the posting of the logs on to Geocaching.com after I have geocached. The wireless devices can send the information “Live” so it’s done.

An excellent review from fellow geocacher and hiker Calpidder, another from GPS magazine on this unit, and a blog review for hand held devices.

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Blackberry Trimble Geocache Navigator Application

Here’s the link to Trimble about this application.

COST $5.99 per month (but FREE trial for 60 days available)

I tried this out for a week and loved the features and functionalities. It had a good interface, was easy to use, logged the caches straight away (the step I least like to do). But is is slow to load up and find – I had my Garmin out and loaded and found a couple of caches before the Trimble app had found local geocaches…

Worth trying out with the free trial…we had issues trying to download on 2 types of blackberries and had to call for support (not a good message for a little application)

I’ll refer to HeadHardHat’s review as he went over much of the good and bad ad was super thorough about it. He even has his classic GeoSnippet video tutorials to help you along if you use this tool.

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iPhone Geocaching Application

Here’s the link to Geocaching.com about this tool.

COST $9.99

I just added this application last week and planned to go out for a geocaching day on Friday July 3rd with the tool. But that was the fateful day of the Fisher Fire (Here’s the geocachers updates on this) that brought down the servers for the Geocaching site – and the downside of an app that relies on the Internet was shown.

But the servers were up the next day and July 4th was the big geocache day (30+ in 1 day!)and we used the iPhone app. The navigating part is not so good – hard to know where to go, how far away you are.. But the details of the geocache are great including an inventory of any Travel bugs! So you can target finding these. And the ability to post a field not live is super great! At the end of the day I still had to go online and load them up – but was simply a click of a button vs having to remember information about each geocache find.

The tool can take a little while to find local caches – but less than the Blackberry Trimble – and you can alos access your pocket queries so do ‘offline’ caching from your iPhone – another big plus!

Summary – not yet ready to go 100% iPhone but see this as a great partnering tool when the hubby and I are out together. we can each have a tool that adds a different aspect to our fun.

Here is a link to reviews about other iPhone geocache applications from “Let’s Go Geocaching” – did not even know there were others. I’m sticking with GroundSpeak as it ties to my account. And $10 is not a lot for a one-time fee for the great interactions it has.

Update October 2010 – The best geocaching GPS market is growing strong with the iPhone app vastly improved, new GPS units from Garmin like the Oregon, and the Android Geocaching app entering the market.