Limited time sale

Through the new year Geopher Lite is now free.

Happy holidays!

Groundspeak's new API

So groundspeak has their 3rd party API available. There isn't a lot of information about it out there other than "email us and we'll work with you".

Does anyone have any opinions about this API? On the one hand, if I were to use it, we could get rid of manually typing in cache details. On the other, it looks as though there are many restrictions on basic users. I hate to turn Geopher Lite basically into advertising for groundspeak's premium member services.

Thoughts?

(Also Wim, I haven't forgotten about GCBuddy compatibility. I got to the point where I'd pretty well have to restart my coding on that feature, so it's sat on the backburner for a while. I do plan on getting that working again, but it's not as simple as flipping a switch.)

2.0 released

Yep, I finally got off my duff and fixed the last few remaining issues, ignored the half-done GPX importer, and sent this into apple. I hope the last few of you still sticking around likes the update. As always feedback, good and bad, is appreciated!

Apologies...

The update has gone on far longer than I had planned. If you have been waiting for a release and not yet seen anything, feel free to drop me an email, I may be able to set you up with a beta version to play with.

Free Chirp?

Opencaching.com is giving away a chirp a day for each placed cache. There aren't a ton of active users on there right now, so your chances are pretty good if you cross-post a bunch of caches. Check out the rules and make sure your caches are marked as entries in the contest!

User Questions

I've taken what I have done with the iPad version of Geopher Lite and been working on what is essentially a rewrite of Geopher Lite, that is closer to the original vision I had of the full version. There are plenty of things on my list left to do.

You can see the results of my work here.

I have kept putting off my changes for Geopher Lite because to do what I wanted would essentially be a rewrite of the app. I do have changes, and I have made some improvements, but nothing I am satisfied with. I believe that I will only be comfortable with a full revamp.

I was also holding out hope that groundspeak would eventually open up more to 3rd party developers now that they are dominating the market for geocaching on the iPhone. I do know they are working on a 3rd party developer API, but it is invite only. Because I directly compete with them in the iPhone space I don't expect them to contact me. (Though I would love it if they would!)

I'm going to have to assume at this point that this won't happen. So where does that leave us?

I would like to take many of the changes I've made for the open caching port and put them into Geopher Lite. This will lose the skin support but should bring the app more into the modern iPhone world. For example, settings will be contained in the app itself. I will likely move forward with this and have an update submitted in the next few weeks.

As always, thanks for using Geopher Lite!

opencaching.com

A friend of mine tipped me off to this site this morning. It looks like Garmin is going to host their own geocaching site. I'm very interested to see where this is going.

I normally don't mention stuff like this here, but one of the big deals about this is that they have an open API to interact with. I do need to read the terms and conditions, but it's likely that Geopher Lite will be able to directly interact with the site. That's a big deal.

Work continues on the iPad version with a few features that will enhance the functionality quite a bit. Some exciting stuff, especially when combined with the above. I'll keep you posted. In the meantime, go create an account and check out this new player in the geocaching community.