I’m kicked back in the recliner enjoying the rare Tuesday night football game and the phone rings. Much to my surprise, it’s a cacher I haven’t spoke to in awhile. Apparently he has stopped by the blog a time or two and knows how much I dig the geocaching mobile applications. He gave the heads up on a new Android app for Opencaching, that’s .com not the other guys. I must investigate!
I just downloaded an application called “Cache Me” , which is an Android mobile application for Garmins new Opencaching.Com website. Much to my surprise, it worked well… very well. I fired up the app, it determined my location, I chose the closest cache to me, it gave the description, a navigation map, and I could access the hint. It still lacks the bells and whistles of the Groundspeak application, but it’s scares me how fast the development is coming along on their site.
This news will probably get Groundspeaks attention however, it is devastating for the .us crowd. They have third party app work arounds, Opencaching.Com has their own application. Less then 30 days live and they have their own app, how outrageous is that! The .us site is good and it scores well in a recent subjective comparison of geocaching sites but, the comparison is using old school mentality. The .us folks are going to become to Garmin what Navicache became to Groundspeak. The future of geocaching is now going to be shaped by Groundspeak and Garmin, everything else is quickly becoming second best.
