Behind The Scenes: Geocaching Podcast - October Cacher Coffee

XpunkX, Darrylw4 and HeadHardHat recording the Geocaching Podcast

 The Geocaching Podcast is such a fun show to do. Not only do I get the opportunity to talk about all the fun and exciting aspects of geocaching but I get to do it with such talented personalities like XpunkX and Darrylw4. Now take that and put it into an open discussion forum like our monthly Cacher Coffee and we can go on for hours if we wanted. Last night's show was no exception.

Matter of fact we were in such a talkative mood we almost did the entire show just on our initial show banter alone. Now what makes our Cacher Coffee episodes so much fun is that it is like I mentioned earlier an open format. We decide prior to the show what bullet points we want to discus and then discuss them. Normally in a show we have sometimes dozens of key points to talk about in a rather structured format but on Cacher Coffee nights we have about three broad points and we just go at it. The other nice thing is that during these episodes we open up the chat room and hang outs for our listeners to get their .02cents in as well. Sometimes we get a bunch of people who chime in, sometimes not. Either way we go through a lot of content. The hard part overall is getting us to shut up. Happened last night, we start the show. We get talking about what happened during the past week and we get over half way through the show and we aren't out of the banter stage yet. Way too much fun.

Believe it or not we did actually have some things to talk about and we discussed at great length subjects like

The lastest version of GSAK and the cool macro additions you can now add to your geocaching prowess, Cachesense has a really sweet update for Android and what is going on with the Geosphere / iOS6 bugs that are about to be fixed. It was a really enjoyable show to do and we hope you enjoy listening to it as we do making it for you. Be sure to check it out in the next day or so when it gets released to all the available podcaching sources. You can get all of the Geocaching Podcast episodes also right from our website at http://www.geocachingpodcast.com.

The Geocaching Podcast is recorded LIVE each and every Wednesday at 9:30pm ET. Be sure to come hear us and participate in our chat-room.

See you next week!

Andy HeadHardHat Smith 

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Our award winning, geocaching based blog: GeoCache: I'm NOT Obsessed... Right?
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Playing with GeoSphere on my IPad

GeoSphere Iphone App on Ipad 2

After re listening to this weeks Geocaching Podcast. I remembered the discussion I was having with Darrylw4 about the use of GeoSphere on the iPad. The actual discussion was why we would most likely NOT use the iPad 2 out in the field but because of it's use of Google Maps and having the ability easily to see all of the Geocache prospects at the same time and how it would be highly useful IN the car. That being said I took the plunge and purchased it. This is really just some first impressions and not a fair review. Since you have seen me play mostly with Blackberrys and Androids in the past I thought you would get a kick with me dipping into the Apple world.

Right off the bat I can say that there are currently no really satisfying Geocaching apps for the iPads. iPhones there are a good selection but not for the iPads. Yes I am aware of the one or two wannabes but they are not in the running with the big dogs. So when you install GeoSphere you are installing the iPhone version. Here's the issue with that. When you install an iPhone app on an iPad it is running an iPhone emulator. So you end up with the screen of an iPhone in the center of your iPad. If you attempt to 2x the screen the text of GeoSphere is very blurry and almost impossible to read. So the alternative is to zoom into the text with your fingers which does keep the clear text but you can then only see part of the screen within the iPhone emulator. I choose this as the lessees of two evils. At least you can read what you need.

Since GeoSphere does not have the ability in of itself to load the nearest Geocaches it takes you directly to the Geocaching.com website. So if you want to utilize your Pocket Queries you have to access your email (which GeoSphere actually provides the direct access) and then download it directly into the application. Nice feature but you have to take all these extra steps instead of wham bam - go. Not a show stopper.  Once you load your .gpx all the bells and whistles turn on and it runs very similarly to other Geocaching apps.

I won't have time to go Geocaching during my lunchtime today but I was able to load my Lunchtime GotD .gpx file and observe my next possible finds with a single glance. A very nice feature from GeoSphere I plan on using a lot.

More to come...

-HHH

GeoCache: I'm NOT Obsessed... Right?
http://headhardhat-geocache.blogspot.com/
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Please don't forget to visit our GeoSnippits Geocaching Tutorial Videos Website at
http://www.geosnippits.com