EarthCache Wrapup
(See my first entry for background information on EarthCache)
If you hadn’t noticed, EarthCache is working again. Apparently the block was an automated process, which has been lifted, and things seem to be running smoothly now that I’ve implemented a caching mechanism. I had hoped to pull in some additional information from Geocaching.com, like cache size and type, but I don’t have enough time to finish that up.
I’m going to go ahead and post the source for this project, (under the LGPL license). If you make any modifications, feel free to send them my way and I’ll update the script. Adding some extra fields will be as simple as adding an extra preg_match() or two.
I have also received a response from Geocaching.com, which is probably better just to read, rather than me summarizing. Thanks for all the support, and keep using EarthCache! I’m sure I’ll make updates to it soon.
July 9th, 2005 at 11:46 am
That’s great code, tried it on my site and it worked like a charm, that’s how geocaching should work. But they’re right to block too many requests on their server though.
July 10th, 2005 at 3:54 pm
I’m surprised you got a response. I know of a couple of people who didnt.I don’t really see it being any different to a pocket query so I wouldn’t have thought its any different in bandwidth usage….
July 11th, 2005 at 2:31 am
It would be great if this was an actual layer that you could turn on and off in the layers area.
It works for me, but the list is definately partial.
July 15th, 2005 at 2:33 am
Hi,
your skript isn´t working at the moment. I´ve received a parse error.
Look at my site to find out how to show your local data (like images) in google earth dynamicly.
July 16th, 2005 at 10:45 am
So in other words if geocaching.com cannot capitalize from your efforts, then essentially ist ’screw you’.
Remember when geocaching was free?
Keep up the good work!
August 15th, 2005 at 6:22 pm
SoFlaChris, geocaching.com does benefit. Because people click through to their site to read about the cache before going to look for it. This is advertisment for their site, and they don’t even have to pay for it!
September 3rd, 2005 at 2:24 pm
Actually, this script would directly compete with Geocaching.com’s Pocket Queries, which allow you to download geocache searches as GPX files, which can in turn be imported into Google Earth. They are losing $3 a month for every person who uses this script rather than becoming a member and downloading the GPX query results.
September 16th, 2005 at 6:22 pm
I’m having problems getting this to work today. I keep getting a “Parse error: unterminated entity reference at line 3.”
September 18th, 2005 at 10:49 am
As of 9/17 I am getting a parse error with the code on line 3. Any ideas?
September 20th, 2005 at 11:36 pm
I’ve been playing with your awesome GC layer for the past week and love the feature - but I’m getting the same error as Sicorius.
I hope it’s not GC blocking your requests again - this is so useful for finding caches along a specific route and for finding caches in very large ZIP codes (i.e. the middle of nowhere!)
October 24th, 2005 at 7:33 pm
Groundspeak has just started publishing the ability to do the same thing through the GC.com site that Andy’s code did from the start. Andy, I hope that you got some royalties out of this.