Wireless access to geocaching info

Discussion about software such as GSAK, OziExplorer etc, as well as all things hardware, GPSrs, laptops, PDAs, paperless caching, cables etc

What type of mobile device do you have or expect to have in the near future?

SMS capable only
6
25%
SMS and WAP
8
33%
SMS, WAP and Java enabled
4
17%
Full internet - eg recent PDA
4
17%
Other
0
No votes
Not interested / don't know what you're on about
2
8%
 
Total votes: 24

leek
250 or more caches found
250 or more caches found
Posts: 573
Joined: 28 March 03 8:07 pm
Location: Lane Cove,NSW
Contact:

Post by leek » 01 May 03 12:28 am

I've moved this topic to the Software / Hardware Solutions section... any messages here will appear in that section and vice versa...

CacheMonkey
Posts: 19
Joined: 24 April 03 11:14 am
Location: Sydney

Post by CacheMonkey » 01 May 03 12:10 pm

I have only just discovered this thread. It all sounds very interesting, but I would think geocaching.com would have started something like this long ago. Anyway, I have some good ideas. WML and WAP pages can be hosted from any webserver (so long as it is configured to do so) and are just a different ContentType. If we had a server that could host Java servelets (ie Apache Tomcat) available to us we could perhaps come up with some sort of real time page scraping that uses the CacheMonkey Engine to create a real time menu of the latest caches available for each state. A few problems i can see with this is that CacheMonkey requires a login to geocaching.com to actually get a lot of the information it needs, so i guess users would need to login to the WAP pages. Also all requests to geocaching.com would be coming from the server hosting the WAP pages, this may eventually get found out and be blocked.

CacheMonkey could easily be setup to create the WAP pages automatically as one of its output file types, and build the menu pages as well.

I have a lot of fuzzy ideas flying around at the moment, so im just throwing into the discussion to see what comes of them. Some sort of Powered by CacheMonkey WAP site is very easily doable.

Mind Socket
Posts: 1329
Joined: 29 March 03 6:04 pm
Location: Gladesville, Sydney
Contact:

Post by Mind Socket » 01 May 03 1:14 pm

I have an architecture in mind that's similar, Leek (good ideas BTW). Using perl and a sample of a cache list database that I found in a brown paper bag on the street, I envisage setting up real time searching and drill down to cache info. I'm not sure how the drill down will work because scraping is considered naughty, and that's all I'll say about that here. ;) Something will be worked out.

Once it's all working, it can port easily to a hosting service that has the necessary support services. nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more.

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