FAQ

Here we will collect all questions that you might have and hopefully some answers. šŸ™‚ Please use the Contact-Page to contact us, if you have any questions!

About GeOrg

Buying and installing GeOrg

Using GeOrg

About ranitos

Answers

  • Why is GeOrg named GeOrg?
    Of course, GeOrg ist short for Geocaching Organizer. But thatā€™s only half of the answer. At first we wanted to call the tool ā€œGeorg Eschingā€ which, when pronounced in german, sounds much like ā€œGeocachingā€. There are some caches in our area that use the name ā€œGeorg Eschingā€ as kind of an eyecatcher.
    But at the end, we thought ā€œGeOrgā€ was less complicated and snappier, so we just kept the first name šŸ˜‰
  • Is it possible to buy GeOrg without the Android Market?

    We currently offer GeOrg only in the Android Market due to legal and financial reasons. Also, our software doesnā€™t support serial number activation or anything comparable, so, unhappy as we are with the situation, we canā€™t offer you an alternative šŸ™

  • I donā€™t have a credit card. How can i buy GeOrg?

    As of late 2009 the Android Market only accepts credit cards as a sole payment mechanism. This is going to change, though. In mid december T-Mobile announced a Market-Update, that will allow users to pay for apps through their phone bill. Though it doesnā€™t say so, the announcement currently seems restricted to the US and to apps with a dollar price-tag. Itā€™s a step in the right direction, though.

    Meanwhile, if you donā€™t want to get a real credit card, you might want to get a virtual one. Wirecard is a german bank offering a virtual prepaid master-card. Before buying, you deposit a small amount of money on your wirecard. This transaction has a small service fee (see their pricing-page). After that you can use your Wirecard just like a normal master-card. Thereā€™s a fee for foreign currencies though (the Wirecardā€™s account currency is EUR), which is 1.5% of the transaction.

  • GeOrg requests a lot of permissions. What for?

    GeOrg interfaces a lot with the operating system. Hereā€™s a list of permissions GeOrg asks for and what it uses them for:

    • Coarse and fine location
      This allows GeOrg to determine your position either via GPS or via cell-network or wifi (if enabled). Of course, this is necessary if you want to go geocaching. The data is only used in-app, to display your position, calculate distances, etc.
    • Read GMail, GMail-attachments, EMail-attachments
      If you want to open a GPX-attachment from your mail-app, GeOrg is handed an internal URL to that attachment, but as soon as it tries to read from the attachment (to import the caches), some email-apps enforce that you have given GeOrg permission to do so. So this permission lets GeOrg import caches from attachments you selected. GeOrg does not access your emails or attachments of its own accord.
    • Full internet access
      GeOrg needs this to load images in cache-listings, maps, GC-Vote-ratings, routing-services, etc.
    • Modify/delete USB storage contents modify/delete SD card contents
      GeOrg stores and accesses some data on your SD-card, like crashdumps, spoilers and external CacheDBs.
    • Modify global system settings, Change Wi-Fi state
      Some system-settings can be changed from within GeOrg, mainly this is used to switch Wi-Fi on/off if you let GeOrg determine your position by Wi-Fi.
    • Prevent device from sleeping
      GeOrg optionally lets you switch off the screen-saver as long as itā€™s active.
    • Control vibrator
      To enhance feedback for some of the smaller user-interface-units (like the lock on the map), we have included vibration-feedback to assure you, that you hit the right spot.
    • View Wi-Fi state
      Letā€™s GeOrg check the state of your Wi-Fi-service if you decide it should use that service for location-determination.
    • View network state
      This is used in several places around the app to check if a network-connection exists before sending out requests to GC-Vote, routing-services, etc.
  • How many caches can GeOrg manage?

    In theory GeOrg can manage as many caches as your internal SD-memory supports. One restrictions applies, though: All caches from one CacheDB will be loaded into memory, when you open that CacheDB. Up until version 1.1.3 that means you can expect good performance up to 1000 caches per CacheDB. You can always open multiple CacheDBs, though, if you need more caches in GeOrg.

    In version 1.1.4 there will be some optimizations that help GeOrg cope with larger amounts of caches. We tested with CacheDBs up to 2000 caches and found GeOrg quite usable, still.

  • The app asks for a GeorgConnector. Where can I find this?
    A connector is used to get caches from external sources into GeOrg. You can always import GPX-Files (via mail-attachment and via SDCard) but to get ā€œlive-dataā€ from other sources youā€™d need a connector.

    There is a walkthough on how to import and use GPX-files in GeOrg available here.

    At the moment there is no official connector released on the market. We have a coding sample (connecting to geocaching.com) ready for anyone interested in starting to code, but we will not officially publish it without groundspeakā€™s consent, which we currently do not have.

    In case you are interested in spending some time and building the sample yourself, there is a walkthrough here. By now a few of our customers have suceeded in building and using it.

  • Where can I find travelbugs and coins?
    You can find imported travelbugs and coins on the Cache-Detail-Page of the cache they were assigned to in the GPX-file you imported. If there are travellers in the cache you are looking at, you will get a ā€œCoins/TBsā€-Header that you can click on. Clicking on one of the travellers letā€™s you visit its pages on geocaching.com.
  • Do I need a Groundspeak Premium Membership to use GeOrg?
    That depends. Generally GeOrg is independent from Groundspeak or other geocaching-hosters. The only requirement is that you have to provide geocaches as GPX-files to GeOrg. There are several sites on the web that offer geocaching-data as GPX-files, even without registration.
    Groundspeak, though, has made it a requirement for you to have a Premium Membership to be able to obtain geocaching-data in GPX-format. There are ways around this limitation, but unfortunately Groundspeakā€™s Terms of Use do not permit you to use these ways. Still they exist and are used by many geocachers.
    So the answer is ā€“ do you want to import ā€œGroundspeak-hosted-gpx-format-geocachesā€ and donā€™t get in conflict with Groundspeakā€™s ToU? Yes, then youā€™ll have to be a premium member if you want to use all of GeOrgā€™s features.
  • You are a german developer ā€“ why donā€™t you release a german version of this site and GeOrg?
    Weā€™d love to translate this site and GeOrg to german, but our time is quite limited. So we decided to first release GeOrg in a language that would allow most of you to use it and watch how things work out. If we develop a broader german user-base, or many requests for a german version come in, we will decide.