What is the best app for chatting with other geocacher in the vicinity

[back_ache]

I'm a friendly community-like person and like the idea of chatting with geocachers \ waymarkers nearby

 

Is anyone else interested in doing this and if so what apps are you using for the purpose.

 

I have installed firechat as it can do local chat without an internet connection (for when I'm trudging around the woods)

[+BBWolf+3Pigs]

I'm a friendly community-like person and like the idea of chatting with geocachers \ waymarkers nearby

 

Is anyone else interested in doing this and if so what apps are you using for the purpose.

 

I have installed firechat as it can do local chat without an internet connection (for when I'm trudging around the woods)

 

We have several Facebook groups in our general area.

[+Bubbles&Bonkers]

I'm a friendly community-like person and like the idea of chatting with geocachers \ waymarkers nearby

 

Is anyone else interested in doing this and if so what apps are you using for the purpose.

 

I have installed firechat as it can do local chat without an internet connection (for when I'm trudging around the woods)

 

Total non techno girl here, but how does it work without internet and phone service? Reminds me of Waze where you can find people near you (supposedly for traffic stuff), but that must need the internet. It'd have to be specific to finding cachers only, so it'd work by GPS locating you? Ooo, and it should identify muggles with a big red X or ogre icon or something. That way you know they're comin' and you can appear to be doing something other than finding a film can in the bushes. I think it's an awesome idea!! Invent it and make oodles! I'd buy it.

[+cerberus1]

"Chatting while trudging around the woods"...

No wonder we hear of folks walking off cliffs, or face-first into trees.

 

The rare time I'm "chatting" in the woods, it's with a phone up to my ear.

Doesn't anybody talk anymore?

[+NYPaddleCacher]

I'm a friendly community-like person and like the idea of chatting with geocachers \ waymarkers nearby

 

Is anyone else interested in doing this and if so what apps are you using for the purpose.

 

I have installed firechat as it can do local chat without an internet connection (for when I'm trudging around the woods)

 

Personally, when I go trudging around in the woods I do it to get away from the internet, cell phones, and constant commercial bombardment.

 

 

[+Bubbles&Bonkers]

 

Doesn't anybody talk anymore?

 

Nope. Chat's where it's at.

[+cerberus1]

I'm a friendly community-like person and like the idea of chatting with geocachers \ waymarkers nearby

 

Is anyone else interested in doing this and if so what apps are you using for the purpose.

 

I have installed firechat as it can do local chat without an internet connection (for when I'm trudging around the woods)

 

Personally, when I go trudging around in the woods I do it to get away from the internet, cell phones, and constant commercial bombardment.

+1

[+K13]

During the times when I have used a phone for caching, nothing is as annoying as the phone ringing or a text message coming through and distracting me from the cache hunt. When using my GPSr, u usually leave the phone in my truck.

 

I have no personal desire to bother others with the details all of what I am doing as it happens. That's what the cache logs are for when I write them after the caching trip.

[+T.D.M.22]

I like to use phone calls, text messages, and the occasional email.

[+frinklabs]

Extending the capability of the proposed [FEATURE] CPA - Cacher Proximity Alerts to include a chat option might work for this.

[+cerberus1]

Extending the capability of the proposed [FEATURE] CPA - Cacher Proximity Alerts to include a chat option might work for this.

If adults don't care at all about their privacy I'm okay with it, but there should be more than a simple switch to enable it, and default should be "not participating/off".

- Last thing you want to hear is some perve was finding kids in parks with this thing...

[+niraD]

If adults don't care at all about their privacy I'm okay with it, but there should be more than a simple switch to enable it, and default should be "not participating/off".

Yeah, Neongeo has a feature like this, and the default is off. I never saw the point of it, and never turned it on.

 

I prefer speaking face-to-face with other geocachers in the vicinity. But if they aren't in the vicinity, I use our local forums and FB posts (not FB chat or message or whatever it's called).

[Stompy]

Google Social Hiking or check out http://www.shareyouradventure.com it's a social hiking website mainly used in the UK but it's amazing. It tracks your location on a map and when you tweet it shows the tweet at your position on the map. So people chat to you via twitter whilst you are walking it will also show photos from twitter or Flickr too. Video also if you have bandwidth and audioboos. It creates a multi media record of your caching trip. I've just begun using it myself.

[+jellis]

We use Google Hangouts sometimes. We mainly use it if a group of us are going on a trip (or some back home just want to chime in with us) we can all be in the same room and we chat.

[back_ache]

how does it work without internet and phone service?

 

It uses bluetooth to pass messages directly or via other users (a technology known as a 'mesh'), its biggest use case has been in a large crowd situations (such as a festival or protest) where mobile phone towers either can't cope with a sudden peak in usage or authority's shut them down.

 

Most famous usages were the protests in Hong-Kong, Taiwan, Iran and Iraq.

 

Though my suggestion for using it is more benevolent, it'd nice to know I was ready for the zombie-apocalypse

[back_ache]

Extending the capability of the proposed [FEATURE] CPA - Cacher Proximity Alerts to include a chat option might work for this.

 

They are working on an SDK which could help with that https://opengarden.com/sdk

[knowschad]

Extending the capability of the proposed [FEATURE] CPA - Cacher Proximity Alerts to include a chat option might work for this.

If adults don't care at all about their privacy I'm okay with it, but there should be more than a simple switch to enable it, and default should be "not participating/off".

- Last thing you want to hear is some perve was finding kids in parks with this thing...

 

How would that help pervs find kids in parks? Might help them find senior citizens in parks.

[+Bubbles&Bonkers]

how does it work without internet and phone service?

 

It uses bluetooth to pass messages directly or via other users (a technology known as a 'mesh'), its biggest use case has been in a large crowd situations (such as a festival or protest) where mobile phone towers either can't cope with a sudden peak in usage or authority's shut them down.

 

Most famous usages were the protests in Hong-Kong, Taiwan, Iran and Iraq.

 

Though my suggestion for using it is more benevolent, it'd nice to know I was ready for the zombie-apocalypse

 

OMG! The thought of zombies having cell phones is freakin' me out. And you can already never, ever get away from them. I've seen the movies. Vampires and wolfmen, yes. Zombies, no way.

[+uxorious]

 

Personally, when I go trudging around in the woods I do it to get away from the internet, cell phones, and constant commercial bombardment.

 

This absolutely, for me. If it wasn't for my wife's health, and the need to be connected for that, I wouldn't turn my cell phone on in the woods.

[+JohnCNA]

how does it work without internet and phone service?

 

It uses bluetooth to pass messages directly or via other users (a technology known as a 'mesh'), its biggest use case has been in a large crowd situations (such as a festival or protest) where mobile phone towers either can't cope with a sudden peak in usage or authority's shut them down.

 

Most famous usages were the protests in Hong-Kong, Taiwan, Iran and Iraq.

 

Though my suggestion for using it is more benevolent, it'd nice to know I was ready for the zombie-apocalypse

 

I thought bluetooth only worked up to 50 meters or so? In a geocaching setting, people would really text/chat others who are within 50 meters? Man, I am just sooooo old, I guess.

[+larryc43230]

Personally, when I go trudging around in the woods I do it to get away from the internet, cell phones, and constant commercial bombardment.

^ ^ ^

This.

 

During the times when I have used a phone for caching, nothing is as annoying as the phone ringing or a text message coming through and distracting me from the cache hunt. When using my GPSr, u usually leave the phone in my truck.

 

I have no personal desire to bother others with the details all of what I am doing as it happens. That's what the cache logs are for when I write them after the caching trip.

^ ^ ^

And this.

 

Maybe I'm showing my age, but I can't for the life of me understand why people go through withdrawals when they find themselves separated from the hive. Personally, one of the main reasons I go to the woods, whether I'm geocaching or just hiking, is to shut off the artificial noise and enjoy the sounds of nature. I usually take my cell phone with me, but that's for dialing 911 when I fall off that cliff.

 

--Larry

[Stompy]

We all play the game our own way and that's the beauty if geocaching.

[+niraD]

This absolutely, for me. If it wasn't for my wife's health, and the need to be connected for that, I wouldn't turn my cell phone on in the woods.

Hmm... The last time my wife called me when I went geocaching, the conversation went something like this:

 

Phone: [ring]

Me: Hello!

Her: Hel#o, ###ust wa#t#########################

Phone: [silence]

 

Phone: [ring]

Me: Hello again.

Her: Hello,## go###ut #ff ###o#####o yo###########

Phone: [silence]

 

Phone: [ring]

Me: Hello.

Her: Do yo#####w w#e###ou####################

Phone: [silence]

[+nikcap]

Any old timers remember using FRS radios set to channel 2 for this?

 

I've recently used Google Hangouts. That's probably what I would use now ... if more cachers were on G+ and the Hangout.

There is another location based game that uses this app almost exclusively and it work well in that enviorment

[+NYPaddleCacher]

how does it work without internet and phone service?

 

It uses bluetooth to pass messages directly or via other users (a technology known as a 'mesh'), its biggest use case has been in a large crowd situations (such as a festival or protest) where mobile phone towers either can't cope with a sudden peak in usage or authority's shut them down.

 

Most famous usages were the protests in Hong-Kong, Taiwan, Iran and Iraq.

 

Though my suggestion for using it is more benevolent, it'd nice to know I was ready for the zombie-apocalypse

 

Out of curiosity have you read a book called Cyberstorm by Mathew Mather. It's an fictional story about an apocalyptic event the occurs after a massive denial of service attack shuts down the internet and communication in the U.S. It mostly takes place in NYC where a monster storm occurs at the same time that all communication goes down. The use of mesh networks to combat the widespread lawlessness that occurs is a major theme in the book.

 

I'm somewhat familiar with mesh networks (but haven't heard about using Bluetooth as a transport mechanism) from a couple of implementations. Some might have heard of the "1 laptop per child" project designed to distribute an inexpensive laptop called an "XO" to children in developing countries around the world. It had an interesting funding model called "buy one, get one" where one could make a donation to buy a an XO laptop for a child and you'd receive one as well. The laptops used a Mesh network to create adhoc networks in remote classrooms. Each laptop basically had a wifi receiver and transmitter that would allow children to communicate with each other.

 

A more interesting application was based on a piece of hardware developed by someone I met in Zambia in 2007 (she actually lives in Colorado). Her interest was in helping women farmers in developing countries communicate market information (basically prices, quanities of various commodities) between the sellers (the farmers) and buyers at regional markets. She first tried an approach that involved giving inexpensive cell phones with an SMS application to women farmers but found that the farmers husbands saw value in the phones, would take them, go into town and sell them to buy beer.

 

So she developed this device that basically just had a button and a microphone. The farmer would record a message such as "I have 3 bushels of cassava I would like to sell for 100 thousand Kwacha (about $19)." The message would be digitized, then using a store and forward mechanism using Mesh networking it would be transferred from device to device. The really clever part is that should she was able to get these device on the local buses (small vans) that would travel between remote villages and larger towns where the markets were held. Only one of the farmers (with a device) would need to walk the 2km or so the the main road where the bus stopped. Once the message got to town it would get played on community radio stations which had a wide broadcast range where potential buyers could hear it. Since the piece of hardware that was used to record and distribute messages was single purpose it didn't really have any monetary value, thus the husbands wouldn't be able to sell them for beer money.

 

It might be interesting so if some sort of multi-cache could be constructed using mesh networking. I've heard of caches that use NFC (near field communication) and something which used the same idea, but with a mesh network might be interesting. For example, go to stage one, where you connect to a mesh network to receive a piece of data and the coordinates for the next stage. At stage two, there would be another device using a mesh network which would receive the piece of data, then display the coordinates for the final location. It could probably be done with a couple of arduino devices.