Day: August 21, 2010

As a big Ayn Rand fan, I was delighted to come across a Wired article which has since gone viral about Nick Newcomen who created the largest written message visible only though Google Earth. While I use GE for geocaching, I do like what this guy has done. Read the whole story at his site, and then view everything in GE for more info on how he did this.

We bought an iPad two weeks ago – 32Gb 3G model – and I’ve been looking at the apps specifically for geocaching. Right off the bat, the one developed by the folks at GC.com isn’t designed for this device – it is an iPhone app. While it does work, the display is iPhone sized, and can be blown up to fill the screen, it does distort the image. Hopefully they will rewrite it to take advantage of the device.

I’ve installed two other apps – Geocache Viewer, and iPlunder HD. Both are iPad apps and take advantage of the screen. Of the two, iPlunder is better for field use primarily due to its use of Google Maps a la GC.com’s site. While you have to use a free service, Dropbox, to transfer the data to the app as compared to connecting from the Mac to the iPad via a browser, the mapping function does make life easier. I’ll report back after a field test which will require activating the AT&T data plan.