Geocaching needs Apple!
I love geocaching, there`s no doubt about it. And geocaching.com is one of my most visited websites. At the same time there`s one thing that I just can`t deny - in many ways this website blows.
I - Usability
Navigation on this site is totally unintuitive, even if you`re a regular user, you still sometimes have a hard time finding, where exactly this or other feature is hidden. Do you need more detail on that? Take a look on the left column menu - the one you see both if you`re logged in or not. There are 9 options there. Out of those some you probably won`t need at all:
- Getting started (do you really need it as the first option on the menu after you`ve been geocaching for several years?)
- Find a benchmark - as far as I know, benchmarking isn`t exactly the same thing as geocaching, and most likely this is a link that 99% of geocachers never visit
- Resources - not a top priority link for sure
- GPS Reviews - where probable is some need for such a category, but not on the top level menu
As a normal user you will regularly use only "Hide & Seek a cache" and "Your profile", that`s about it.
This structure certainly makes very little sense to me - the stuff that you really need is difficult to find, while worthless categories are on the front page. Why do I have to find "Create pocket query" link through google and not on the main menu?
II - Lack of features
For lots of geocaching features you will need to use external services. For example, to generate your geocaching stats. And when you have generated the diagrams in an external tool, you have to paste the HTML into your public profile manually. Why on earth doesn`t geocaching support UTF-8? And why is there no WYSIWYG editor for entering cache information (the only options are plain text and writing HTML code manually)? And why can`t users give ratings to found geocaches in order to make it possible to easily differenciate between a great and a piss-poor geocache?
III - Policies
The cache confirmation policy used by Geocaching totally blows. I have nothing personal against Pohatu Nuva - the guy responsible for accepting or declining caches in our region, but wouldn`t it make more sense to have local volunteers to judges caches before those are published? If real geocaching enthusiasts were to be responsible for cache publishing, there would probably be fewer shitcaches around - purposeless caches that nobody would enjoy to find. It would be only logical if there were 5-10 people in Latvia with cache publishing/disabling rights.
And here we come to the conclusion - Geocaching needs Apple. Currently one can describe the situation in geocaching like this:
- geocaching.com in the equivalent of Microsoft - the Big Player who controls most of the market and doesn`t really care about what`s going on around it
- all different local sites (geocaching.su, geopeitus.ee and the rest of those) are the Linux style players - open-source freaks who can provide some good features, but are totally unstandartized and only split the geocaching community but can`t offer a real solution for all problems (mainly - because they don`t have the main geocaching database).
And under these circumstances a second SERIOUS player would come in handy (like Apple against MS) - some company who would threaten geocaching.com that it could lose a big share of its market, thus motivating the geocaching developers to get off their lazy asses and finally offer some major updates to the website. Otherwise we may have to wait for any improvements a long, long time.