Groundspeak Portal

Join Us for the Grand Opening of the GPS Adventures Maze Exhibit

jeremy — Thu, 24 May 2007 19:48:00 GMT

Groundspeak, in partnership with Trimble and Minotaur Maze Exhibits, is pleased to announce the creation of a new exhibit designed to teach people of all ages about navigation, GPS technology and geocaching.

GPS Adventures is a hands-on traveling exhibit that features GPS technology—its history, current uses and future possibilities; and simulates geocaching by leading visitors through a 2,500 square foot maze rich with interactive experiences.

In honor of the exhibit’s national premiere on June 2nd at Minnetrista, a museum and cultural center located in Muncie, IN, a geocaching event will be held from 2 - 4 p.m. Join visitors from Groundspeak, exhibit creator Minotaur Maze Exhibits, development sponsor Trimble and technology contributor Magellan for an opening ceremony and meet-and-greet, and enter a drawing to win a free GPS receiver. Then be among the first to experience the GPS Adventures Maze Exhibit!

For those who can't make it we'll be uploading pictures of the event. In the next week we'll also be launching a new web site that describes the traveling maze in more detail.

For more information about this event, exhibit and related activities, please visit www.minnetrista.net.

Geocaching.com Database Upgrade

jeremy — Thu, 17 May 2007 19:31:00 GMT

As many of you know, the geocaching community has grown a lot over the past few years. The increasing number of players has resulted in a strain on the Geocaching.com website - especially on Mondays when everyone comes back to log their finds!

Our goal for the next year is to update the hardware and software of Geocaching.com to keep up with the needs of the community. On May 16th we completed a major upgrade in our hardware that will help us maintain our current system while we work on rebuilding it for the future. You should experience a noticeable difference in site performance. We also implemented a few new features:

Cache Details page - Log counts and icons are shown at the top of the log entries to give you an idea of the type of logs.
Google Maps - there's a new and improved icons and a link has been "bumped" to the nearest cache page so you can find it easier.
Basic Friends List functionality - you will soon be able to get notified when your friends log their experiences online!
"Will attend" - Upcoming events that will be attended is shown in your "my" page if you post a "will attend" log entry for an Event Cache.
Pretty Pictures - There is a new slideshow feature for cache log images
Many minor bug fixes and enhancements

If you see anything odd, there's an ongoing bug topic in the older forums where you can post issues and comments. Someone was also nice enough to post a rave topic for those who like the changes.

Thank you for your continued support. Now go outside and play!

Waymarking in the News

opinionate — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 23:52:00 GMT

Today the Tacoma News Tribune featured Waymarking.com in an excellent article titled: Waymarking: The Latest GPS Game. Our very own waymarking elders, Hikenutty and Rose Red, did an excellent job of introducing our game to the uninitiated.

Don't forget to participate in the contest held by The News Tribune, which focuses on waymarking News Article Locations found in their publication. Keep in mind that you don't need to live in the Puget Sound area, as the paper features articles from around the country and the world! More information on this contest can be found in the article linked above. Happy Waymarking!

Top 10 Signs You Are Into Waymarking

opinionate — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 23:49:00 GMT

A few creative and slightly daffy waymarkers are working on a top 10 list in the forums that have us cracking up. See for yourself here.

1. You take 4 letters to mail to 4 different post offices to get 4 new U.S. Post Offices waymarks.
2. You wonder if the patch of poison oak you wandered through would count as a Carnivorous Plant Locality. After all, it does seem to be eating your skin alive.
3. You plan your family vacation around a car trip to visit the Leavenworth Nutcracker, Bata Shoe, and American Sanitary Plumbing Oddball Museums.
4. You buy a table saw, band saw, drill press, belt sander, and 5 gallons of paint to build a funny mailbox.
5. You wade out into the water with your handy measuring tape to see if the waterfall is at least 10 feet tall.
6. You visit Disneyland and you take 20 pictures of benchmarks in the ground, 15 pictures of smashed penny machines, 8 Hidden Mickeys, and 2 of your family. And the two of your family only because they accidentally got in the way.
7. Next year's road trip, up the California El Camino Real to waymark/log all of the bells. Might as well hit the missions while we are at it.
8. Suddenly you are a connoisseur of Graffiti.
9. You take your dog to restaurants just to see...
10. You wonder how much dirt it would take to bury your house to make it an Earth Home.

Well done!

How to Give a Gift Groundspeak Premium Membership

jeremy — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 18:37:00 GMT

Often around the holidays we are asked by extremely thoughtful (and did I mention attractive?) geocachers how they can give a Groundspeak Premium Membership as a gift. Here's a quick how-to on gifting a membership to someone who will appreciate this gift forever - or at least for the next year.

How to purchase a Premium Membership for another user:

Visit Signal’s Corner Store.
If you don’t already have a Store account, create one and log in. (This is separate from your Groundspeak user account)
Click the picture of Signal on the front page (or go directly to the annual membership page).
Towards the bottom of the page is a field labeled “Username to Upgrade/Renew”. This is where you type in the username of the person you want to give the membership to.
Ensure the Quantity is correct (default is one year) and click the “Add to Cart” button.
On the next screen, click the “Checkout” button to purchase the Premium Membership.
When supplying credit card information, please note that the security code on the back of the card is the last 3 digits.
Once at the Review page, click the “Place order” button to complete the process.
You will know your purchase was successful when you are presented with an order number. You will want to record this number for your records. The Premium Membership will be applied within two (2) business days.

How to Create an Avatar with mypictr

jeremy — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 17:43:00 GMT

An avatar is an Internet user's representation of themselves in the form of an image or three-dimensional model used in computer games. Most often you'll see them in forums above a user's name. Often this image represents an interest the user has (or a picture of the user).

For the last 6 years we have been using avatars in the Groundspeak Forums and if you've been surfing the many sites on the Internet you may be noticing that they are becoming more prevalent in other areas of web sites. Waymarking and Geocaching will be no different. But how do you create your own avatar?

If you're adept at Adobe Photoshop or Paint you can create one yourself. All you need to know is the general dimensions of the image accepted on the web site. For the old forums, for example, the width is always 75 pixels while the height is variable. The new forums prefer a 75x75 pixel size to keep all of the avatars uniform.

For this HowTo, we'll be using a new site called mypictr, so the HowTo will be pretty straightforward.

Visit mypictr.com
Click the browse button and select a photo from your hard drive. It will upload to the web site and display in the window.
Ignore the network dropdown and put 75 in both of the size boxes. You'll notice the little box change size.
Using the zoom controls you can zoom the image in and out to fill the box with whatever avatar image you want.
When you are ready, click pictrit! You will be able to download the image to your machine.

Once you have your image, you can add your avatar to these forums by doing the following:

Log into the forums and click on your name in the upper-right hand corner of the screen.
Click on the Avatar tab
Click on the browse link and find the image saved to your machine, then click update.
Make sure Enable Avatar is set to "yes"

You're all set!

How to Find Caches Along a Route with Google Earth

jeremy — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 20:03:00 GMT

The #1 request has been to create a way on geocaching.com where you could upload a travel plan and get back a series of caches along that route. At last this feature is now available.

This is a short instruction on how you can create a route and generate a Groundspeak Pocket Query to search from 1 to 5 miles along the route.

Some points first:

This works anywhere in the world as long as you have a proper KML or GPX of routes/tracks
We do not generate the routes themselves, but rely on outside tools like Mapsource and Google Earth to generate them
However, we do plan to allow people to eventually click on a map to generate a route on the fly. I believe most will go the Google Earth route, however
It only works with GPX 1.1 - not 1.0
This has been tested to work with Internet Explorer 6 and Mozilla Firefox 5

Let's begin!

Download/Install Google Earth (if you haven't already)
Click on the Directions tab in the upper left-hand corner of the page
Enter your start and end locations and click the button to generate your directions.
Scroll up the results with turns to the root (should have the start/end location)
Right click and choose "Save as"
Save as type (*.kml) and not (*.kmz) which is the default.
Visit the user routes page
Choose the tab "Upload GPX / KML"
Click Browse and find the file you saved from Google Earth
Click upload and after a short time it will show you the route in the window.
Check the box next to the name of your route and select the button "save selected routes." You can also click on preview to see it in the small map or double click on the route name to edit it before saving.
From here you can either click on the name to add more info, make it public, etc. Or you can create a pocket query with the "Create pocket query" link.
You should be able to follow the PQ creation process as it is similar to how it works using a point of origin.