TAG :: Toronto Area Geocachers

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:

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.

Related Posts:

• Garmin Updating GPS Units for OpenCaching
• Opencaching.com also updates their site – Now with cache verifications
• Developers: OpenCaching.com Testing API Write Access

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)

Related Posts:

• Geocaching.com Adds New Features
• Geocaching.com (Beta) Maps – Sneak Peek
• Ontario Trails Project 0.81 Available now

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:

1. On the cache page, click on the little arrow below the favourite count to see the ratio, and who favourited that cache
2. In a list of caches, like a search, click on the number of favourites to see the ratio pop out.

Related Posts:

• GSAK Version 8 is Available Now
• Geocaching.com Update Time – Challenges, Logs and Profile Changes (Oh My)
• Geocaching.com update brings 3rd Party API