Geofinder
- August 12th, 2008
* NEW * v1.4 has more accurate positioning, fix for a TON of hangs/bugs, in-app browser, and much more!
Geofinder is a little iPhone app I wrote for Geocaching. I intended to release it for free, but Steve wants a $100 tax to write software for his phone, and that’s gotta come from somewhere.
I was pleasantly surprised at how smooth it was to geocache with iPhone. Safari does an excellent job at rendering the Geocaching.com website, and the Google Maps link at the bottom of each cache open in the native Maps application, making it easy to pull up aerial photos, etc. Logging visits, uploading photos, etc. all work wonderfully. I was very pleasantly surprised.
Geocaching with Google Maps
But the experience really lacked when it came to finding the geocaches. There’s no way to search for caches with your current location: at best you have to find a nearby business, enter in its address, wait for results. For awhile I bookmarked the results page for my apartment, but it was still difficult to go from one cache to another efficiently.
Enter Geofinder. No nonsense, just press an icon and get a list of nearby caches. Fast, easy, and nothing to configure–it just works.
Geofinder results for my location
Troubleshooting:
Nothing’s happening! It’s just staring at me!
It requires a really good accuracy reading before it will launch Safari (<=100m). This is because seeing results that are based on a kilometer or so of your actual location aren’t very useful. Unfortunately, iPod 1stgen and other devices without GPS sometimes have a more difficult time getting an accurate reading than the iPhone 3g. There’s not a whole lot I can do about that.
iPhone 1stgen users, make sure you are outside and have a strong cellphone signal.
The good thing about this app is it just keeps trying to determine your location. So if you’re having trouble you can walk around a bit and it tends to help.
The results don’t update!
This is related to a bug in Safari that I’ve seen once or twice. Open Safari and hold down the Home button for ten seconds to force quit the application. Then try to launch Geofinder again.
I currently don’t have the app listed for iPod Touch on the App Store because quite frankly I’m not sure how well Location works for the iPod Touch, and don’t have any devices to test on. If you’re interested in this, shoot me an e-mail.
Want to help me make my apps better? Sign up to be a beta tester: http://bit.ly/iphonebeta
Hello Andrew…
Great program and idea, thank you for taking the time to do this.
I may be doing something wrong, but when I try and navigate to a geocache i get a message “End location not found”. I go to the google maps link at the bottom of the web page, and i am a member of the website. I also get the location pushpin of the geocache. Can you give me any pointers?
Thank you again for your efforts, this is a great idea, and you should charge more, and get a few £££b!! I’ll pay mor than 59p!
For me, geofinder is wonderful. It does a single simple job in a very satisfactory manner. But I completely disagree with the decision to require a high degree of location accuracy before launching the search. I am frequently (perhaps 60-70% of the time) unable to get a precise enough location. I would like to be able to configure it to go ahead and use an imprecise location, or even better, let it try to get a precise location for awhile, and if I get tired of waiting for it, let me push a button to have it use whatever location information it has, and go ahead with the search. A search based on an imprecise location would still be extremely useful in my case. Perhaps you could make this configurable in a future release of this application. Thanks for making this available.
outstanding in it’s simplicity! Just plain does a good job doing what it does! Tap to open, tap the geocache you want, scroll down in safari to the google maps link and presto you have a red and blue dot, walk till the blue dot meets the red one and presto. I have been geocaching for almost 10 years and live less than 5 min from the first cache ever.
This app makes impromptu geocacheing a delight.
This would be a very nice app, but I have a great problem to use it as designed. I’m using an iPhone 3G, but when I start the app, my current location could not be determined and old coordinates will be used. The only way to get it work, is to start the map applcation before and then start Geofinder.
Maybe this could be fixed in a future release, than this would be a very great and useful app.
Thanks Christian.
I would like to try your GeoFinder application. I have a ipod touch.
Thanks,
Rob
Drew, I’ve found that tapping the “Google Maps” link in *embedded* Safari windows do not open the iPhone’s Maps app, which makes it impossible for me to easily show the geocache location. Could you please add the option or a button to open the search results page in a normal Safari window?
Hey Adam,
I’ve added a preference pane in Geofinder 1.4 that will allow you to open the results in a new browser window.
I had to switch to embedding Safari because of some onerous Apple restriction.
Expect to see 1.4 in a few days.
Thanks!
Drew
Well you work more than 60 hours a week and take the time to write such long and interesting posts in your blog. Respect!
Hi,
I was just checking out your iPhone app in the App Store. Congrats, looks pretty good.
Happy with your sales so far?
I’ve been working with some app developers the last few months, and I’ve learned that there’s two aspects that you need to focus on to be really successful selling apps in iTunes. I’d be happy to share what I’ve learned if you’re interested. Just let me know and I’ll send you a quick overview.
Best of luck,
Ed Turner
Hey there, Matt. I think I’ve finally tracked down this issue. It was a nasty one.
I’ve pushed an update to the app store, (in review, who knows how long Apple takes…) Let me know how it works out for you, and feel free to leave a review in the App Store!
GeoFinder 1.3 (in review) has a more robust location system. After about 20 seconds, it will go ahead and use the best location information it has, no matter how accurate. Thanks for the tip!
Hey Randy,
Feel free to leave a review on the App Store as well!
Hey Troy,
Feel free to leave a review on the App Store as well!