IDLE HANDS

As you all know I like to do some geocaching once in a while, but I’m often a bit surprised as how wrong the coordinates can be. This is sometimes frustrating, and could easily be fixed, all you need is enough data. Another peeve is that you need to write on paper, to validate your find. I geocache with my phone, I don’t feel the need to write my name on moist paper, nor do I really need to exchange small treasures. It’s the search and the “getting out into nature” that does it for me.

Let me describe the solution to the described problems.

1 Every cache has a QR-code.
2 To validate your find all you have to do is scan the QR-Code
3 profit

A few things happens in the background though, when scanning the code, you
* Check the co-ordinates of the device that scans the qr-code
* check the device that does the scanning.
* Looks up the the cache in the database (so the app could present you with a dialog like: “You found “kära jesse” would you like to log it?”)
* Saves the registered coordinates and the device that found it (some devices have better GPS) so that the more ppl log the cache the better it’s co-ordinate gets.
* You log the find.

I think this could be something, I really really do. The more finds, the better coordinates.
Perhaps I should do a little test with the new geocaching.com API’s, guess we’ll have to hide a whole bunch of QR codes then.