I have looked at
Waymarking and
Benchmarking/Trigpointing. In this installment I take a look at alternative cache listings websites.
It’s not just all about Groundspeak Geocaching. There is also
NaviCache,
Opencaching,
TerraCaching and also just recently
OpenCaching.com. I thought as I’d
already blogged about the new OpenCaching.com site that it’d only be fair to give the other sites a bit of the spotlight
NaviCache
http://navicache.com came about
early 2001. It offered a less restrictive service to what was available.
The site offers nearly any type of geocache and there is no charge for
anything on the site.
I signed up for an account to give it a test and immediately loved
the site due to it’s choice of Captcha word to verify my sign up.
Which is worse: a captcha which asks for a colloquial term for an erection or the gods-awful colloquial term it selected?
However, that’s probably the only thing that I loved. I searched for
caches in the United Kingdom and returned 2 results. Both showed strange
coords and one put me out in the sea near Africa! Neither have maps and
showed a message saying that maps weren’t available outside of the USA.
I then attempted to find some caches in New York city and came up with 4
results. I selected 1 and the maps were nowhere near as detailed as
what we’re used to with Geocaching.com. This was where my navicache user
experience ended. It certainly isn’t anywhere near a Geocaching.com
replacement for us UK users and the US listings are limited too. On the
whole the site looks very dated, and isn’t something that I will be
revisiting, although I’m sure it does have its selected set of dedicated
followers.
Navicache Example
TerraCaching
The goal of
terracaching.com
is to provide high-quality caches. Membership is managed through a
sponsorship system and all submissions are constantly reviewed by other
members. There are virtual, locationless and traditional/multi-stage
caches in its database. I’ve heard that some users who have published
caches on Geocaching.com with links to their caches on Terracaching get
warned that unless they remove the link their listing will get disabled.
To me TerraCaching sounded like quite a good idea. We went on quite a
few caching trips last year and finding quality caches in areas you are
totally unfamiliar with was a real nightmare. The recent Geocaching.com
favorites feature however is a lot more helpful now for this sort of
thing.
So I signed up to TerraCaching, knowing that I might not get anywhere
with it, but it’s worth a try. You need to enter your home coords for a
chance of getting a sponsor, so I did just that and had one within an
hour. I was half way there. To try and get another I posted a message in
the forum asking for one. I explained what the purpose of hiding caches
means to me, and my goals with the hides. From reading the site a bit
more I also found that my genuine beliefs about what makes a good cache
hide shared by TerraCaching.com. That evening I got another sponsorship
offer so I was able to check out what the site was all about. Getting
sponsorship is very easy, so if you fancy checking out the site then do
sign up.
I took a look at the world map of Terracaches and it’s clear that the
majority are in North America, the UK and Europe (Belgium/Germany
area). It doesn’t look like it’s caught on in Australia yet, for
example. There aren’t that many around us, but I had a quick lookie at
10 or so of the closest ones. Unfortunately the majority were virtuals
and of the few that weren’t they were long multi-caches. I continued my
search further afield and found again that the majority were virtuals.
There were a couple of standard caches here and there though.
Terracaches worldwide
Terracaches near me
My initial perception of what Terracaching might be about was wrong,
however as I hadn’t been able to access the site without a sponsor I was
limited. I had hoped that Terracaching would be a site with extra
really good caches, as well as double posts of those particularly good
ones at Geocaching.com that have met their approval, however from their
Wiki:
“You should be aware though, that you should not ‘cross post’
(duplicate cache listings here from other listing sites, or visa versa).
The TerraCaching community generally prefers that caches listed here be
unique to this site. However, since every cache is judged on it’s own
merits, exceptions are always possible. For instance, the community
actually encourages cross posting event caches.”
Although it has a slightly better feel than Navicache, the
Terracaching site also has a dated feel to it. The cache listings are
nowhere near as user-friendly and professional looking as the
Geocaching.com ones, although this is no fault of the cache owner, they
can only work with what they have got.
A terracaching listing
My Terracaching Conclusion
After having a good snout around the Terracaching website, I don’t
think that this is not a website that I will use. I’m not interested in
creating a cache that only a couple of finders will bother visiting
because quite frankly I do take a lot of time to research and plan my
hides already to ensure that they are of top quality and going to all of
that effort for just 2 visitors just isn’t worth it. I am also not
interested in visiting virtuals or long multi-caches. On first glances
it doesn’t look like there is anything special about the caches listed,
however I guess the overall look of the site doesn’t really help “sell”
the caches that are truely unique and special. I guess Terracaching just
isn’t for me. It obviously does appeal to a select few,and there will
always be people who don’t want to follow the crowds and, for example,
won’t use Microsoft products simply because they are Microsoft products.
Unless I’m going to an area where there are quite a few Terracaches
that I may pass, I’m unlikely to spend much time even thinking about
Terracaches.
Opencaching
Opencaching is a completely independent, non-commercial caching site.
Each Opencaching site is country-dependent and there is indeed an
Opencaching UK
site. There was a recent mention of the US Open Caching site on the GC
Podcast which encouraged me to join their UK twitter feed. A new webcam
opencache was tweeted in
London’s Leicester Square
the evening before we went to London so I joined up and downloaded the
GPX file. We however didn’t venture to that part of London. It was
however enough to tempt me.
The Opencaching UK site does have quite a slick feel to it, however
of course doesn’t match the professional standard of Geocaching.com. The
idea of something being “Open” however does mean that there is no
financial gain by anyone. This means no adverts and no charge for
services such as pocket queries. The site is run by volunteers. This is
one of the main “selling points” for Opencaching. Although I am a
supporter of open source (I’m a big fan of PHP, MySQL, Firefox, Linux,
etc.) when you consider the amount of caches that are on Opencaching vs
Geocaching.com the cost to use the more exciting parts of Geocaching.com
are in my mind completely justified. To run and maintain server power
costs, license costs, and developer wages for a site with over a million
caches and as many users as it has is by no means cheap. To me, paying a
few quid each year and having to view adverts on some of the pages is
completely justified. The adverts are also very well selected, and
things that I’m glad they advertised about as I have benefitted from
them. Fair enough the big boys are making a profit from the site, but
good on them. It was a good idea!
For Opencaching to grow and really stand a chance at being a popular
caching site it needs people to start using it, like people started
using Geocaching.com. Once there are enough people using it to hide
caches, the finders will follow. This is a big leap and can mean the
difference between the site failing, or rapidly growing into something
big. As I write this Opencaching UK has 439 active caches and 1296
finds, making it a very small fish in comparison to Geocaching.com.
An example of a Opencaching UK listing
Something that does attract me to OpenCaching is the different cache types that you are allowed to submit. There are:
Virtual caches – Just like there used to be
Educache – A virtual cache that teaches something, perhaps historical about a site.
Webcam – Like the existing ones on Geocaching
Podcache – An mp3 file. Your coords take the finder to a location
and instructions in the file tell them where to go. I guess just like
those museum tours where you walk around with a head set!
I do love the idea of a podcache and have a great idea for one that I
could hide, but would I go to the effort of creating one to publish on a
website that no-one really uses? Erm, well, no… Not yet, not until (if
ever) the site gets big. But that’s not really the spirit if I think
like that. If everyone has this opinion then nothing will happen, if
everyone has the contrasting opinion then the site will flourish. My
attitude on most things like this however is that I’m not going to make a
difference. If me becoming vegetarian would cause the whole world to
become vegetarian and stop animals getting slaughtered then I would do
so, however by not eating meat I’m not making much of a difference so
I’m going to carry on eating my bacon sarnies!
I have countless fun arguments about this with my vegetarian brother.
Groundspeak definitely haven’t upset me enough to boycott them!
On Opencaching UK there are quite a few caches listed in South Devon,
and around London. There are 2 close to where I cache, however I have
already found them on Geocaching.com. I guess this does show that for it
to take off it does only take a couple of people in one area. If it
does get quite big and some cachers are listing on OpenCaching and not
Geocaching.com would reviewers need to start checking the proximity of
opencaches to ensure that Geocaches aren’t too close?
Opencaching UK map
I’m not saying don’t use Opencaching. I’m just questioning its
usefulness. I think that me and all of the other premium members are
unlikely to give up all of our caches and migrate to Open Caching just
because we don’t have to pay. We can however list our caches on both
sites, however it took me a whole afternoon to list Rowney Wood Ramble
to get my descriptions perfect so I’m not going to do it again. And why
log caches in two places? Opencaching for me offers needless, limited
duplication and the 4 exciting additional cache listings don’t tempt me
enough to start using it as a Geocaching.com replacement.
Also see:
http://opencaching.de/ is active if you can sprechen Deutsch
http://www.navicache.com/
http://www.terracaching.com/
www.opencaching.us/articles.php?page=impressum
Opencaching.us is designed to be an effective non-profit alternative to existing geocaching sites. Additionally, Opencaching.us offers users an open platform
Overall…
I’ve tested out Opencaching.com, Opencaching.org.uk, navicache.com,
and terracaching.com and unfortunately can’t say that I will regularly
visit the sites although I might peek at Opencaching.com every now and
then to see what’s going on and what all of the fuss is about! I think
the thing I’ve always wanted with geocaching is a way to find stand out
caches that will make my trip to somewhere worthwhile. I think the
recent favorites feature is enough for now to keep me satisfied in that
region though. I hope I’ve provided enough in this post to give an
insight of the alternatives out there and I encourage anyone who likes
what they’ve seen to sign up to the sites.
