www.Opencaching.us is ready!

[RVRoadTrip]

First, I’d like to thank the testers from WGA who helped find bugs, typos, language issues, etc. Hopefully, we found them all. 🙂

The site is now ready for public use and we would hope that cache owners will submit their caches to the site. There is lots of info on the home page and the Wiki that will answer most, it not all, of your questions.

The use of the site is very straightforward and you should have no troubles. But if you do, feel free to contact me via the site.

Thank you again WGA!

RVRoadTrip (aka Jerry) OC US Admin

http://www.opencaching.us

[glorkar]

Can’t wait for the site to become more popular. I’ve already cross listed a few go mine that I have on GC. Thanks for all of your hard work!

[Lostby7]

Is Opencaching owned by Garmin? Not that it really matters, but it might explain the recent lack of communication between Geocaching.com and Garmin.

WHOIS information for opencaching.com :

[Querying whois.verisign-grs.com]
[whois.verisign-grs.com]

Whois Server Version 2.0

Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.

Domain Name: OPENCACHING.COM
Registrar: MARKMONITOR INC.
Whois Server: whois.markmonitor.com
Referral URL: http://www.markmonitor.com
Name Server: NS.GARMIN.COM
Name Server: NS2.GARMIN.COM
Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Updated Date: 13-sep-2010
Creation Date: 14-sep-2003
Expiration Date: 14-sep-2012

[labrat_wr]

creation date 14 Sep 2003?
seven years to launch?

Disclaimer : Always answering to a higher power.

[glorkar]

It is true that Garmin bought the http://www.opencaching.com domain. All of the existing Opencaching sites use a dot something else.

United States: opencaching.us
Germany: opencaching.de
Poland: opencaching.pl

You get the idea. I think the creation date is when the domain was created. I don’t think it has anything to do with when it was last purchased. As far as I know, Garmin just recently acquired it.

[Lostby7]

…and there is this:
http://itsnotaboutthenumbers.wordpress.com/

[zuma]

@Lostby7 wrote:

…and there is this:
http://itsnotaboutthenumbers.wordpress.com/

Wow. Fascinating, if true. Though at this point it sounds more like juicy gossip and guessing, than fact. Even so, pretty interesting.

Personally, I tend to think that Garmin and Groundspeak have a symbiotic relationship, and I cannot see either doing anything to screw that up. But who knows?

My take is this: Currently, Groundspeak has a de facto monopoly on the game of caching. However, monopolies dont last forever (AT&T, Standard Oil, Microsoft come to mind). But the only way that they could loose their monopoly at this point in time, is only if competitor came in that was well captilized and had management that had a significant number and quality of new ideas.

The main reason that I felt until now that opencaching has no chance to succeed is because they are obviously quite undercapitalized and lack a significant number of new ideas. However, if Garmin were to underwrite the operation and at the same time come up with cool new ideas like chirp, than you could see Groundspeak’s monopoly fade.

z

[Lostby7]

@zuma wrote:

@Lostby7 wrote:

…and there is this:
http://itsnotaboutthenumbers.wordpress.com/

However, if Garmin were to underwrite the operation and at the same time come up with cool new ideas like chirp, than you could see Groundspeak’s monopoly fade.

z

My initial impression of the Chirp was that it was like a Wherigo but with a physical beacon rather than a coordinate based hotspot. I wonder now if the reason for the Chirp is that Garmin cannot promote Wherigo as that belongs to Groundspeak….but like you say Zuma, at this point it is all speculation.

[gotta run]

Right now, there are lots of better ideas than what geocaching.com has to offer. Geocaching.com has become more strict on its guidelines over time, at the same time that it has worked continously (though perhaps not intentionally) to squelch creativity. No virtual caches, webcams, or locationless caches. No caches that require you to do meet additional fun requirements. No placing caches within .1 miles of another cache. No, no, no, no, no.

But, to break the monopoly and the “kleenex(C)” type name-recognition where geocaching.com is synonymous with the sport, you need not just a better idea and offering, but the the capitalization and committment.

I look at letterboxing as an example of this. The granddaddy of sites is letterboxing.org. However, that site is a complete dog. Dated and static. So someone took it upon himself to create atlasquest.com and devoted his passion into getting it off the ground. I’m not sure which site has more listings but I would guess atlasquest, and it is a much better site.

Of course, it helped that LB.com doesn’t mind that AQ is in its “space,” to the point of allowing it to link to letterbox descriptions hosted on the site and vice-versa.

Right now I just don’t see that anywhere in the caching realm. But, as you say, one day it will happen. (and it will be interesting to see what the number-hunters do with their lives then!)

On the Left Side of the Road...

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