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Well this should provide some interesting responses..
As of late, a gpx of every active cache in the state would be very handy to have and I think it would be a great service from the wga if it were here.
Yes, there are some methods of doing this, tedious they are for sure but can be done. There are also widgets and whizbangs that can do lookups on the fly but not everyone has this ability and as its been proven that is really only good in more populated area’s.
I think once the initial file is put together, updating with new and changes would be minimal. I could be wrong of course but there is already something connected that shows us the most recent logs, I would think that code could be written to garner the changes/adds in fairly short order.
Updating monthly at most and setting it up like the gc.com “My Finds” query to only allow once a month access would be very adequate.
I’ve also posted this request to the gc.com feature request page but thought it might be more of a regional item so adding it here.
respectfully submitted
rsplash40
Every active cache in the state? Dude, there has to be tens of thousands of caches in the state. That won’t work.
I really don’t need a PQ of the whole state anyways – only areas that I’m going caching in. If it is in an area dense with caches like West Bend, no problem. I’ll run several PQ’s ahead of time with different settings so I’m covered. No problem.
To sum it up, your proposal won’t fly.
There use to be a GC.com Map that showed ALL of the WI caches, but it went away a year or so ago.
Can you explain to the non-techies here (me) what that would do? Always open to new ideas, but I aint bright enough to understand this one.
z
That won’t work.
Not exactly how the inventor of the light bulb thought about things now is it…
I am not going to comment on the technical can/cannot as I am a technical person but have never run a geocaching website before and am therefore not qualified and won’t pass judgment as quickly as others.
I will however state that if the WGA offered Groundspeak “owned” content to the public, I am sure we would be breaking the law. Granted, I am not a lawyer either so if one were to comment I would not be offended if they told me I was off my rocker dead wrong. Now if we wanted to build our own database of geocaches and all of our members co-submitted their geocaches to both listing services, now that would be a different story.
One more thing. There are many people doing many different things out there so just because you don’t have a use for a database of all caches in Wisconsin doesn’t mean that everyone does not.
@todd300 wrote:
Every active cache in the state? Dude, there has to be tens of thousands of caches in the state. That won’t work.
I really don’t need a PQ of the whole state anyways – only areas that I’m going caching in. If it is in an area dense with caches like West Bend, no problem. I’ll run several PQ’s ahead of time with different settings so I’m covered. No problem.
To sum it up, your proposal won’t fly.
As of 248pm, there are 11854 including a handful of events. I also know it does work, have seen it, have used it, just can’t update it.
If you don’t need it, ignore it and this posting.
Are you the entire governing and technical body? Didn’t think so, so how do you know it won’t fly?
@-cheeto- wrote:
I will however state that if the WGA offered Groundspeak “owned” content to the public, I am sure we would be breaking the law. Granted, I am not a lawyer either so if one were to comment I would not be offended if they told me I was off my rocker dead wrong. Now if we wanted to build our own database of geocaches and all of our members co-submitted their geocaches to both listing services, now that would be a different story.
Excellent thought! While not in a “packaged” format the wga does troll and give info direct from the gc site (recent logs) but does that differ? Best answered by gc’s legal team probably.
edit: another thought is about the LCG, that list is some how created and then a PQ is able to be built. Wonder if the same could be done for the all state?
@zuma wrote:
Can you explain to the non-techies here (me) what that would do? Always open to new ideas, but I aint bright enough to understand this one.
z
Lets take the technical side out of it as I think the gpx limitations currently put on by gc.com are there for resources reasons (ie: takes up a lot of processor time for 1000’s of people to run pq’s at any given time). I could be wrong of course but thats what my experience suggests.
For me, lately, I’ve been doing a lot of planning, checking, figuring things out. I’ve had to build numerous pq’s and routes which was quite time consuming and frustrating to get everything lined up. In addition I’ve done a lot of it at in places that there isn’t internet access for miles so I’ve had to use what was on the laptop already which may not have encompassed everywhere I wanted. Victim of changing plans and winding up not where originally planned, quite often lately it seems.
I’ve been fortunate enough to have been supplied a hand built gpx file of the entire state. If not the best, its a very close 2nd best caching tool I have.
Its awesome to have up north and its come in handy dozens of times. If you are planning big routes it saves a lot of time trying to find the cache to meet your needs (ie: on a delorme page, or cool historic spot), and trying to lookup whats along routes. Plus, its there all the time, no stress about finding internet or getting on the right cell tower to get a weak data signal.
Unfortunately due to some technical differences in systems I can’t update it and the person who originally made it doesn’t need the additional headache of constantly updating it. Hence I was hoping for an automated process.
This is definitely technically feasible. GPX files can be as big as you want and contain an unlimited number of caches… 500 caches is just to keep the size of Pocket Queries to a reasonable so they can be easily generated and sent via email. It would not be too hard to set up a premium account that had PQs running over various parts of the state and have a server combine all the data it received. Or we could have a system where users could upload their PQs, which would then get merged into a single “master” WI state file.
I could also be very handy. It is getting to the point now that you need to run numerous queries just to get the caches you could encounter during a short geocaching run. The radius of pocket queries centered on a major city (Milwaukee, Appleton, Green Bay, etc.) is quite small.
Unfortunately, the Groundspeak terms of use don’t allow the WGA (or anyone else) to do this. The data is theirs and you can’t take this data and retransmit it in any form. You are technically violating the terms just by having the all Wisconsin GPX file that someone else built using the data they received… it would have been OK for them to build this for their own personal use, but redistributing it is not kosher.
@Groundspeak Terms of Use wrote:
All materials available on or through the Site, other than Third Party Submissions (collectively, the “Site Materials”) are the property of Groundspeak or of its licensors and are protected by copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws. Groundspeak reserves the right to impose additional terms and conditions upon Your use and viewing of particular Site Materials, and any such terms and conditions may be posted on the Site in connection with those Site Materials. You may not reproduce or retransmit the Site Materials, in whole or in part, in any manner, without the prior written consent of the owner of such materials, except as follows: You may make a single copy of the Site Materials solely for Your personal, noncommercial use, but such copying must be consistent with any applicable additional terms and conditions and You must preserve any copyright, trademark, or other notices contained in or associated with such Site Materials. You may not distribute such copies to others, whether or not in electronic form and whether or not for a charge or other consideration, without prior written consent of the owner of such materials. If you have any questions, contact us at [email protected].
You might be thinking… the text and pictures in the cache descriptions do not belong to Groundspeak because they are provided by other cachers. True, the contributors retain their rights to this information. But Groundspeak is granted an unlimited license to use and even sell this information per the terms of use. Publishing a cache doesn’t mean this information is in the public domain, but it does mean that Groundspeak has the right to do with it what they want. So you could redistribute the data for the caches if you obtained permission from each person who hid the caches… and if you received this information from them directly, not via geocaching.com.
Jeremy – Thanks, It’s good to hear a response from someone who knows a bit about this.
Is the GPX file format itself invented and proprietary to groundspeak? For example, if I built a cache database of a bunch of geocaches that were NOT published to geocaching.com could I export a GPX file and distribute it? What if a cache was dual posted? Is the crux really only that the cache info was submitted to groundspeak’s site?
I understand this is not exactly what rsplash is talking about but I am curious if the GPX file format is “theirs” or if it’s just like any old delimited file format. Bear with me here as I have never looked at a GPX file in a text editor so I know nothing about the format but I hope to look at it more when I have the time.
@-cheeto- wrote:
Is the GPX file format itself invented and proprietary to groundspeak?
No, it’s just an XML standard.
“The GPX 1.1 schema was released on August 9, 2004. GPX has been the de-facto XML standard for lightweight interchange of GPS data since the initial GPX 1.0 release in 2002. GPX is being used by dozens of software programs and Web services for GPS data exchange, mapping, and geocaching…GPX is an open standard”
On the Left Side of the Road...Thanks for the response gotta run. Now I remember taking one look at a gpx file and remember it being xml.
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