I should maybe clarify my earlier posting (however the link does explain it all) … the are many steps/procedures to set up the whole process … in summary:

(1) You must have a Premium (Paid) account on http://www.geocaching.com

(2) When you are logged into your account, clic on [My Account] (over on the left) and then [Member Features] (last item in the Quick View row across the top). From there click on [Pocket Query Generator]. You will use this to setup a “Pocket Query” that will email you a .GPX files with the data for the caches you choose. (In my case, I have it email me every Friday, the 200 caches closest to my zip code, that I have NOT found and are NOT MINE).

(3) You need to install software on your DESKTOP computer called “Spinner”. When you get your .GPX file emailed to you … you can use the .GPX file to load coordinates into your GPSr (assuming you have a cable) … but for PDA users, you also feed the .GPX file into “Spinner”. “Spinner” then creates (or “spins”) a tiny local website on your DESKTOP computer of all the geocaches that were in the .GPX file (in my case, 200 caches). “Spinner” is a geocaching specific piece of software, that you can download for free.

(4) But now you have to get “spun” website on to your Palm or Pocket PC. This is why you need to download free software called “Plucker” (it’s not just for geocaching, but putting any website on a PDA). “Plucker” has 2 parts, one for on your DESKTOP and one for on your Palm or Pocket PC. The Desktop portion prepares the files for your PDA, and PDA portion allows you to view the various cache web pages, onces you’ve sync’d them to your PDA.

Lots of steps … lots of things to understand. Unfortunately that’s the way it is. But the link in my prior posting takes you through it. Once you get it setup, the “weekly” process is something you get use to doing and goes quicker. If your not really comfortable around computers, you might want to have a friend help you out that is.

I will have to give Cachmate a try … I had read somewhere that it “bogs down” your PDA and that Plucker runs smoother/quicker once on the PDA. Maybe they were wrong and I should give it a try.

I do like how with Spinner/Plucker that from any cache it shows you the 5 nearest caches in the file. Does Cachemate do something like that too?

I use both Cachemate and Plucker.

I use CacheMate as my own personal repository of most of the caches I’ll ever visit (currently holds around 1900 caches.)

I use Plucker only for smaller lists of specific caches I know I’ll be hunting soon (only about 300-500 at a time)

This is simply because CacheMate can store a trmendous amount of caches without hogging the memory and Plucker, with all the images and similiarity to an actual html page, is a huge memory hog (for those of us who do not have a lot of it to go around).

Try them both and see what you like. If I had to go with one or the other, I’d go for the Plucker/GSAK Combo. That’s just me though.

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Team GeoPink
– Jeff
Co-conspirator to make the world a better place…

I used the “Spinner/Plucker” combination for a couple weeks … now thanks to the feedback on this board I loaded up “Cachemate” last night … played around with all the settings and stuff for an hour or so (I paid the $8, so I had full functions).

The two products certainly have very different approaches to being paperless. I suspect that I’m a convert to “Cachemate”. While I’m pretty handy around computers, thus dealing with “Spinner” then “Plucker” does not really slow me down; I’m thinking why bother with all the extra steps (even if they are not that bad). “Cachemate” does have a lot more setting/preferences that you need to play with to get it to your liking … for some reason I didn’t notice at first that I could set it to search near caches listing the “miles” and thought I was stuck with “kilometers”; once I notice that I could change this, I was really happy with the product.

For those that like that fact the “Plucker” shows everthing on one scrollable screen; it’s nice that “Cachemate” has an option of Defaulting to “Overview” mode; which shows the “Info”, “Description” and “Past Logs” screens all as one continous screen.

The big PLUS to me with “Cachemate” is the built in function to “log” your find and mark a cache as “Found It” (“Plucker” is basically a “Read Only” series of web pages).

The one thing you can do with “Spinner/Plucker” that you can not do with “Cachemate” is that you can view your “Spinner” web-world on your Desktop computer, which I found handy for planning a series of caches to find “off line”; “Cachemate” does not offer a Desktop version and does not plan to. Also, I do like how “Plucker” automatically shows you the 5 closest caches at the bottom of each cache listing; but the flexibility of “Cachemate”‘s cache proximity search (being able to limit a proximity direction) and the fact that it saves your search table, out ways the couple extra clicks you need to perform.

[This message has been edited by EnergySaver (edited 05-25-2005).]

There is a find closest caches option in Cachemate if you have the calc plugin loaded. I set mine to the closest 5 caches. I found this helpful today when I had 250 caches loaded and did only 4 of them.

On my specialized trips, I limit the number of caches in cachemate and on my GPS’s, so finding the cache names.

Another tip …

Let’s say you have certain Cities you like to cache in a multiple weekends. In my case I have about 2 years worth of caches in West Bend, a couple weeks worth in Sheboygan, etc.

In “Cachemate” create a new category, I called it “Cities”. Then from the cache selection screen, hit the [New] button to create a new cache entry; give it a cache name like “West Bend”, select the category of “Cities” (or whatever you named the new category), then in the coordinates area type coordinates that would be central to that city (or copy/paste them from a cache you have loaded that is already in the area you want).

Now you’ve got a “fake” cache entry that is central to a specific city. Make more of them, as you wish. Now you simply select your category (in my case “Cities”), click on the name of the city … then activate the “Search Nearby Caches” function, making sure that you set the search screen category to All (or the category you have the real caches stored in) … and now you presented with a list of caches that center from that city (or at least the coordinates you used for that city).