Gee, What a Cache

Those in the telecom industry like to spend a lot of time talking about applications, but typically dedicate very little of that discussion to specifics. So, given many of us already are in a holiday mood, let me share with you my ideas for a fun leisure-time application that service providers and/or third-party application developers might create that ties into one of my new interests – geocaching.

For those of you not familiar with geocaching, it’s basically a treasure hunt for which you use coordinates, available at geocaching sites on the Internet, and your GPS device to find messages and other little doodads (such as the plastic figurines you’d get in a McDonald’s Happy Meal) that are hidden in public areas like your neighborhood park. Basically, it’s a good excuse to get out and hike, and it adds a little adventure to the experience, particularly for pint-size explorers like my 8-year-old daughter, Hannah. It’s pretty popular with families in my neighborhood, which is nestled into the mountains, in Scottsdale, Arizona, and is a worldwide phenomenon.

Geocaching is great just as it is, but it also seems ripe as a jumping-off point for a wide variety of communications tie-ins beyond just the GPS aspect.

 For example, advertisers could do commercial geocache events at the local mall with the cache being a gift or coupon from their store; this might work especially well during seasons in which it is either too hot or too cold to be outside geocaching.

This would create an opportunity for mobile or online advertising of such events. And coupons for gifts or discounts could even be sent automatically to users’ cell phones if they came within range of the cache. This same idea of sending coupons or other things of value to the user’s mobile device could apply for outdoor geocaching as well.

And there is also an opportunity to create online geocaching games that would be nice during those times that your child wants to geocache, but you can’t or don’t want to go out. Again, this could be just another application to drive traffic on the network, could be a site against which to sell advertising or could be a venue through which vendors could offer other promotions.

While most folks today use their GPS-specific devices for geocaching, but also tend to carry mobile phones, I noticed that there is now available something called the Trimble Geocache Navigator. It is being marketed as the first fully featured geocaching application for the mobile phone. It is linked directly to Geocaching.com's cache listings, so users with GPS-enabled mobile phones on Sprint, Nextel, Boost or Southern Linc networks, or BlackBerry smartphones with built-in GPS, can get started without a standalone GPS unit, cables or cache data printouts.

Neat.

I’m not saying we’d necessarily need a new, integrated device to expand the popularity and commercialization of geocaching. But I do think that with the right products and marketing (and given all the press on how folks need to exercise more while also embracing the environment), it seems to me that some of these ideas around geocaching might really have legs.

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