Garmin has introduced a free geocaching find, share, and log site at OpenCaching.com. This site provides an alternative to Geocaching.com, which costs $30 per year for a premium membership.
OpenCaching.com is a resource for creating, sharing and finding geocaches around the world. "OpenCaching.com will introduce more people to this great activity and show them just how fun, easy and rewarding it can be," says Garmin's Dan Bartel. "OpenCaching.com gives us a chance to go beyond the development of hardware and software and interact directly with the vibrant global community of cachers."
OpenCaching.com isn't restricted to Garmin devices. In fact, it will work with any device or software that utilizes GPX files.
I've had the opportunity to try out OpenCaching.com, and find that it has an attractive, easy-to-use interface and outstanding functionality. A search by city or zip reveals a nice, interactive screen that lets you display/sort results in real time by using a set of parameters including difficulty, terrain, size, and "awesomeness" (user rating). You may also screen for traditional, multi-cache, puzzle, and already-found caches.
The easy-to-use interface extends to hiding your own caches and logging caches. The hide cache interface is thorough, including name, type, status, latitude/longitude, whether the site contains a CHIRP, and other details.
Finally, OpenCaching.com has a thorough and easy-to-follow guide to geocaching, including topics such as geocaching basics, GPS devices, rules and etiquette, how-to-hide, the rating system, and more.
OpenCaching.com has a long way to go to match or better Geocaching.com's massive cache database, and it will take a lot of user input to build it up. But OpenCaching.com is off to a great start.
