Geocaching App

[GreenLightJerky]

I've never heard of Geocaching before but it sounds cool. As a music producer I get TONS of cd's all the time sent to me. Usually these end up in the trash, but perhaps if I had an app like this I could put boxes of mixtapes and other promo stuff in fields and have you people hunt for it. Sounds like a sweet idea to me.

I totally Agree.
Im getting ready to start a Hunt for the JERKY GeoCache.

 

[slycrel]

Conversations with Geocaching.com aren't going. They never replied to my emails. I'll try again at some point.

I plan on building in browsing functionality that will enable the user to point to the site of their choice, with the option to pass their current location as part of the querystring. I'm also aiming to add coordinate recognition to the browser that I embed in the application so that whatever site the user is browsing, it'll try to recognize coordinates on the page.

If the user chooses to use the browsing functionality to hit Geocaching.com's nearby listing page and then use the coordinate recognition to attempt to auto-populate the coordinates, they can do that. It's up to the user to make sure they aren't violating the TOS of the site they choose to use. I fail to see how the coordinate recognition is any different than Apple's phone number recognition in the browser that auto-links phone numbers to launch a call.

Best of luck with that. I talked with groundspeak specifically about entering coordinates and it is considered "scraping" of their website and against their terms of use. An exact quote from them is this:

"... if your application is not scraping the site and users are required to enter the coordinates, then it is perfectly acceptable as is using the embedded web browser."

So if you auto-enter coordinates expect a fight.

I am looking forward to seeing your app in the app store.

 

[jamesarm97]

I've got a geocaching application in development right now that you guys might be interested in. There are some screenshots up at www.geodeapp.com and a feature list, and I'm going to be keeping a development blog over at www.nonameindustries.com. Hit me up, let me know what you think and what features are most important to you and I'll try to incorporate them.

I'll buy! Any idea how much you will charge?

 

[sgibson]

Conversations with Geocaching.com aren't going. They never replied to my emails. I'll try again at some point.

I plan on building in browsing functionality that will enable the user to point to the site of their choice, with the option to pass their current location as part of the querystring. I'm also aiming to add coordinate recognition to the browser that I embed in the application so that whatever site the user is browsing, it'll try to recognize coordinates on the page.

If the user chooses to use the browsing functionality to hit Geocaching.com's nearby listing page and then use the coordinate recognition to attempt to auto-populate the coordinates, they can do that. It's up to the user to make sure they aren't violating the TOS of the site they choose to use. I fail to see how the coordinate recognition is any different than Apple's phone number recognition in the browser that auto-links phone numbers to launch a call.

I hope you get it working, the app looks wonderful. It would be interesting to see what Groundspeak say on the matter as to who is violating the ToS, in particular:

5. Access and Interference

Much of the information on the Site is updated on a real time basis and is proprietary or is licensed to Groundspeak by our users or third parties. You agree that you will not use any robot, spider, scraper or other automated means to access the Site for any purpose without our express written permission.

Would they say that the user of the site is violating the ToS for using an app to access it, or would they say the developer of the app is in violation.

You could argue that, as the developer, you are not accessing or copying their information for commercial use (unless you copied a cache list into the app itself, which is clearly not your intention), instead the user is accessing it under the terms of the site agreement.

Best of luck getting it up and running, I can't wait to see what apps become available in the future to support my hobby.

 

[sirmalloc]

Best of luck with that. I talked with groundspeak specifically about entering coordinates and it is considered "scraping" of their website and against their terms of use. An exact quote from them is this:

"... if your application is not scraping the site and users are required to enter the coordinates, then it is perfectly acceptable as is using the embedded web browser."

So if you auto-enter coordinates expect a fight.

I am looking forward to seeing your app in the app store.

If I implement it as I've planned, I don't see how they could have any issue because:

1) It's a webbrowser like any other that the user can direct anywhere. It'll allow the user to hit any site they want, and it does not even contain a link to Geocaching.com

and

2) Coordinate recognition is a general feature that has applications across many sites other than Geocaching.com. Just because their TOS prohibits it on their site doesn't mean I can't distribute an application with the ability to recognize coordinates on any site.

That'd be equivalent to going after Firefox for it's ability to block images that are sourced from a domain other than the current site (typically ads). Even though a site's TOS may prohibit users from blocking ads, it's ultimately the user's decision if they do it or not, and their liability if they violate any agreement they entered into with the site they are browsing.

Maybe there's a glaring hole in my reasoning that somebody will point out. I'm not advocating that a user makes use of this function to violate GC.com's TOS. It's just a handy feature that will make it easy to grab coordinates off any site.

Anyways, I'm really impressed with the community you've built around Geopher and how quickly you got it to the app store. I can only hope my app can have the same success.

 

[sgibson]

Just for reference, I'm not the developer for Geopher (or anything else for that matter), just an interested cacher looking for a nice application for my iPhone (if O2 UK ever get round to stocking the white 3G - still waiting to upgrade at the minute).

I'm happy to support any app that does a good job of helping me go caching without having to buy a dedicated GPS device and think that Groundspeak are a little remiss in blocking apps from accessing their cache info.

I like the idea that you just create an app that recognises co-ordinates in a page without specifically tying it to one particular site. You could then legitimately say that someone can create their own page with co-ords of places they want to go and your app will just point them in the right direction

 

[slycrel]

I understand and don't necessarily disagree with your ideas about the browser stuff, I'm interested to see how it turns out. I'm more tied to geocaching.com than you are it sounds like. Keep us updated.

You do have some good ideas, I particularly like the rotation compass screen idea, that's a nice touch. I'm also interested in seeing how you do offline mapping. I've not seen a solution out there that would be easily accomplished.

Thanks for the kind words regarding geopher's community. I'm looking forward to trying your app out once it hits the app store. I'm assuming I can't beta test it because of tying devices to the developer accounts, otherwise I'd be happy to. =)

 

[sirmalloc]

I understand and don't necessarily disagree with your ideas about the browser stuff, I'm interested to see how it turns out. I'm more tied to geocaching.com than you are it sounds like. Keep us updated.

You do have some good ideas, I particularly like the rotation compass screen idea, that's a nice touch. I'm also interested in seeing how you do offline mapping. I've not seen a solution out there that would be easily accomplished.

Thanks for the kind words regarding geopher's community. I'm looking forward to trying your app out once it hits the app store. I'm assuming I can't beta test it because of tying devices to the developer accounts, otherwise I'd be happy to. =)

I'm not sure if you noticed, but you can provision devices for adhoc deployment in your developer interface at Apple. It'll give you a .mobileprovision file to deploy to your beta testers and you can make a special build of the app for the people you've provisioned. There is a 100 device limit for adhoc deployment, and I'm not sure if you can reclaim after you've allocated a device, but it's a good way to get some testers before you push to the app store. If you are interested in helping me beta when I get to that point send me an email.