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This blog post is the first in what we intend to be a series of newsletter style monthly(-ish) blog posts. Cachetur.no has always been open, and to ensure that we stay open we want to use this newsletter to share information about what’s going on.
The previous month has been vacation time for cachetur.no HQ, and the summer months were a bit slow as well. But most of you have probably not even noticed that, except from the lack of updates in the changelog.
The ambassador team has done a magnificent job handling all incoming support requests, both on the site itself, on Facebook and in the cachetur.no Community. They deserve a huge thank you for that! They continue to handle a lot of this, giving me more time to focus on the development. Ambassadors, you rock!
Recent changes
As previously mentioned, we haven’t done much during the last month. But we did take the time during our vacation to add a couple things.
First we added a calculator for the You might be a geocacher if souvenir campaign. Then we added the first of what we hope will be a series of useful checklists in the app.
Yesterday we also activated the Czech translation on cachetur.no. Czech is the sixth language we support, and it was made possible by the work of QuoX, petruv, Asteerix and Jane9133. Well done!
Things we’re working on now
Right now we’re working on organizing all requests, ideas and bug reports we got during our vacation. I am the only developer, and I do have a day job and like to geocache myself as well. So please understand that while we want to implement your idea as fast as we can, it will take some time.
Once I have caught up, and have finished merging the list of summer ideas/requests with the global list, I will slowly start working on the site again. The app was brand new this summer, and as expected we do have a lot of ideas to work on. Please take the time to complete our app survey.
Things we intend to work on soon
We have two major tasks we have to work on during the last months of the year. The app, and migrating to the new Geocaching.com API.
We have deliberately waited with the second one, as the new API was missing a lot compared to the old. Much has been added now, and we should be able to start migrating soon. This won’t affect you, but it will take development resources.
There’s also a lot of other minor changes we want to do, and we are considering adding logging functionality to cachetur.no (allowing you to log your finds directly from cachetur.no).
We also want to look into improving the route optimization process, and moving it from client-side to server-side optimization. Which will make it a lot faster and more intuitive to use.
Upcoming events
Attending a cachetur.no event, class, talk etc. is a nice way to learn more about the site. Our wonderful ambassadors, and even some really cool users, will be attending several events during the next months.
| Event | Region | What |
|---|---|---|
September 20th GC7WRTM Let’s take a cachetur |
Washington USA |
Class with twlare |
September 30th GC7CX8F Geocoinfest – Seattle 2018 |
Washington USA |
twlare will be available for questions |
| October 6th GC7EXV6 Going Caching 2018 |
Georgia USA |
HikingSeal will be available for questions make sure you get one of our trading cards! |
| October 20th GCTBD Techevent |
Agder Norway |
Beginner course with TBD Class/workshop with thomfre |
| November 18th GC75D90 The Parkville Event 2018 |
Victoria Australia |
Talk with Bukkazoom67 |
Our economy
Running cachetur.no require a constant focus on our expenses, we want to provide you the best service we can, but we can’t consume more services than we are able to pay for. Right now, we have enough money to run the site. But we have seen a steady decrease in amount of donations during the summer. If this trend continues, we have to postpone or cancel some of the features we want to add, and possibly even reduce other offerings.
We still have a positive result for 2018, but it is not high enough to pay for the remainder of the expenses this year. We do however have enough saved up from earlier years, but that won’t last forever.
The app did cost a lot of money, which at the time of this writing had covered 76% of. That isn’t bad at all.
Thank you to all that have contributed, and made all of this possible!
Remember that all of us that work on this site (and app), including developer and all ambassadors, do this for free in our spare time. Cachetur.no does not pay anyone 🙂
Other related news
Remember the current and upcoming souvenirs:
You might be an Adrenaline Junkie if…
Earn 50 individual Friend League points between September 3rd and October 1st
CITO Week 2018
Attend a CITO event between September 15th and September 23rd
International EarthCache Day 2018
Find an earthcache on October 13th or October 14th
GIFF 2018
Attend an official GIFF event between November 8th and November 12th
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