The Groundspeak Block Party – Just Over 200 Days Away!

All over the world, neighborhoods occasionally close off city blocks to vehicle traffic and hold a party in the street. It’s called a “block party,” and it’s a great way for neighbors to get to know one another. In the close-knit geocaching community, it often feels like all geocachers are your neighbors, whether they live 5 or 5000 miles, or kilometers, away.

The Groundspeak Block Party is a Mega Event where you can meet your friendly geocaching “neighbors” from around the world. While there, you can also log Groundspeak Headquarters, meet the Groundspeak Lackeys and participate in several fun activities for all ages. Activities at last year’s event included a scavenger hunt with special prizes and a dunk tank where geocachers could take a shot at dunking Lackeys and Geocaching.com Volunteer Reviewers.

The Groundspeak Block Party will be on August 20, 2011 in Seattle, WA. Although August may feel like the distant future, it will be here before you know it. If you are planning to visit from out of town, we suggest you buy your plane ticket and arrange for accommodations as soon as possible. Tickets to Seattle in the summer can be expensive and prices will likely rise as the date approaches. We are looking forward to seeing all of you there!

Discover Event Caches

Meet face to face with your fellow geocachers to discuss recent finds, clean up a park, share a meal, or trade caching advice. It’s as easy as attending an Event Cache. An Event Cache is our version of a party: when a geocacher or geocaching organization chooses a time and location to meet and discuss the treasure-hunting adventure of geocaching. These events are open to all geocachers.

These fun gatherings introduce you to other local geocachers and helps build your geocaching community. You may end up with a few new geocaching partners too. Event Caches are also a great way to introduce new geocachers to your favorite hobby.

Along with Event Caches, explore Mega-Events and CITO (Cache In Trash Out) Events. An event has “gone Mega” when more than 500 attendees participate in an Event Cache. Geocachers can “go green” at a CITO Event. Geocachers at a CITO Event clean up parks, trails, and other outdoor locations.

It’s simple to find an Event Cache near you. All you have to do is visit the Geocaching Event Calendar for a comprehensive list of Event Caches around the world. You can also try using our advanced search tool. This tool allows you to search for a specific type of Event Cache in a specific location.

So now go discover an Event Cache and get to know geocachers and caches near you. Happy caching!

Benefits of Adding Home Coordinates

Please enter your home coordinates so we can provide information on new geocaches and geocaching events near you.

Happy New Year!

2010 was an exciting year for geocaching! On March 8, we hit a huge milestone – over one million active geocaches listed on Geocaching.com. In the 10 months since, more than 260,000 geocaches have been added to the site.

Last year also marked the 10th anniversary of geocaching and the 10th anniversary of Groundspeak. We celebrated these milestones with Groundspeak’s Lost & Found. The celebration launched the weekend of April 20-May 3 – the 10th anniversary of the first cache placement. Geocachers honored the occasion by hosting 10 Years! events around the world.

As part of Lost & Found, we also wanted to discover some of the “lost” stories of geocaching. Our film crew traveled to capture the 33 amazing geocaching stories featured in the Lost & Found video series. Geocachers also submitted their stories on Geocaching.com.

And since Geowoodstock was in our own backyard, Groundspeak hosted the Lost & Found Celebration just outside Groundspeak HQ. We had such a great time meeting thousands of you that we’re going to do it again in 2011 at the Groundspeak Block Party.

We hit another milestone on 10-10-10, when the geocaching community broke a record. 78,313 separate Geocaching.com accounts logged a cache in a 24-hour period, blasting through the previous record of 56,654 accounts.

So, what’s in store for 2011? We plan on continuing to add great features and functionality. Our goals for this year include improving the quality of the game and taking geocaching “beyond the box.” We’re looking forward to what we can accomplish over the next 12 months with your assistance. If you have an idea that might make geocaching even better in 2011, please post it here.

Thank you for a wonderful 2010 and cheers to happy and healthy geocaching in 2011!

Maps Beta

Maps are at the heart of geocaching, so we are completely revamping the mapping system in multiple phases over the next several months. Version one of the Maps Beta is now live and can provide hours of entertainment as well as a range of exciting features.

Features include:

• Unlimited geocaches displayed anywhere in the world

• Larger map with full screen view

• Speedy geocache display using an innovative tiling solution

• New map types including OpenStreetMap and OpenCycleMap

When you visit the Maps Beta page, read the popup to see what features are coming soon.

You can reach the Maps Beta page from the search results by clicking “Map it” and selecting “View the new Maps Beta.”

Track Your Geocaching Stats!

How far do you travel for most of your finds? Which size of geocache container do you find the most often? The new Geocaching Statistics feature can answer those questions. Geocaching Statistics lets you visualize your geocaching activity in different ways.

Premium Members can see a range of detailed statistics in charts and tables, including finds by day of the year and the average difficulty and terrain ratings of their found caches. All members can see basic information such as what month of the year they find the most caches and a chart of finds per month.

Thank you to the mygeocachingprofile.com website, which Groundspeak recently acquired so that we could add this great information to your Geocaching.com profile. Stay tuned – we will be incorporating more statistics in future releases!

Benefits of Adding Home Coordinates

Please enter your home coordinates so we can provide information on new geocaches and geocaching events near you.

Groundspeak Holiday Card

The Groundspeak Lackeys want to wish you Happy Holidays with the 2010 Signal Holiday Card. Please feel free to share holiday geocaching wishes with your friends and family by passing it along. You can also share the card on YouTube.

Find and Share Favorite Geocaches

The new Geocaching Favorites feature calls attention to exceptional geocaches-helping you select which geocaches to search for and rewarding cache owners for great hides.

Geocaching.com Premium Members can favorite 1 cache for every 10 caches that they have found. The Favorites Points accumulated by a cache are displayed in search results and on the cache page so that all members can see which caches stand above the rest.

Premium Members have the additional perk of sorting search results by the most Favorited caches, D/T levels, date placed and more. If you are a Premium Member, please visit your Profile page to see how many Favorite Points you have accumulated to date.

Learn more about Geocaching Favorites in our Knowledge Book.