GeoKrety (from

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

: ''geo'', "earth" and

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Polish people, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken * Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin ...

: ''krety'', " moles") is an online

tracking Tracking may refer to: Science and technology Computing * Tracking, in computer graphics, in match moving (insertion of graphics into footage) * Tracking, composing music with music tracker software * Eye tracking, measuring the position of ...

service targeted at Geocachers. Each registered object, called a GeoKret (plural: ''GeoKrety''), has a unique tracking code, allowing its movements between locations such as Geocaches to be tracked and registered on the service. While the idea behind trackable items such as GeoKrety originated with the

geocoin A geocoin is a metal or wooden token minted in similar fashion to a medallion, token coin, military challenge coin or wooden nickel, for use in geocaching, specifically as form of a calling card. Many of these are made to be trackable on various ...

and

travel bug A Travel Bug is a dog tag used in Geocaching. Produced by Groundspeak, the bugs can be moved from cache to cache, with unique tracking numbers allowing their movements to be tracked through the company's geocaching website. Some tags are faste ...

, Geokrety is an independent trackable service that can be used with any geocaching activity.

Description

A GeoKret can be anything, but in most cases it is a small puppet or other small toy, which can be placed in

geocache Geocaching (, ) is an outdoor recreational activity, in which participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or mobile device and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called ''geocaches'' or ''caches'', at sp ...

containers. During the registration of a GeoKret on the website, the owner assigns a name and, optionally, a purpose or mission. These missions can be as simple as travelling as far as possible, or travelling to a specific cache, location or a certain type of location. On GeoKrety.org, each item has an individual page, which tracks its movement and calculates the distance travelled. After registering, the owner must create a label for their GeoKret, with its name, mission, the Tracking Code and the website address. Optionally, the short user's manual and a QR code can be included. The label should then be protected against moisture, e.g. by

laminating Simulated flight (using image stack created by μCT scanning) through the length of a knitting needle that consists of laminated wooden layers: the layers can be differentiated by the change of direction of the wood's vessels Shattered windshi ...

. GeoKrety are not trade items, therefore it is not compulsory to put something in a cache to take a GeoKret, nor is it required to take something from a cache in exchange for a GK. If a geocacher wants to take something from a cache, they are obligated to make a trade before placing the GK. Furthermore, there is no obligation to pick up a GeoKret from a cache as users can simply mark the item as "discovered" on the website. In order to log a move or discovery of a GeoKret, users are required to enter its Tracking Code and the location or cache where they left it. The cache can be identified by its waypoint, cache name (the coordinates are acquired automatically from most geocaching services) or by coordinates. The service is free of charge. All content (including descriptions of GeoKrety, illustrations and log entries) made available by publishing them on the site is licensed under a

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

license. The service was founded in October 2007. and is operated by a group of volunteers. As of 8 January 2012 there were 20098 registered GeoKrety and 167009 log entries. All GeoKrety (excluding human-type) travelled 16579482 kilometres.

Supported services

Geokrety are not associated with any particular geocaching service. Users are allowed to place GeoKrety in caches registered in any database, as well as in other locations (e.g. at home), in which case they are required to provide the coordinates. In order to simplify logging of GeoKrety, the website fetches cache information (like a waypoint name, coordinates, description) from many popular geocaching services. For fully supported services, only a GeoKret's Tracking Code (printed in the label) and the cache's waypoint are required, as all other data (like the cache's title and coordinates) are completed automatically. As of 8 January 2012, there were 665997 waypoints (with full cache information) in the geokrety.org database. When dropping a GeoKret into a cache listed at geocaching.com only, the coordinates must be entered manually. A browser plug-in for

Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curren ...

and

Google Chrome Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS, iOS, iPadOS, an ...

is available to automate this. A

Free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term encompassing free ...

android app, GeoKrety Logger, is available on

F-Droid F-Droid is a free and open source app store and software repository for Android (operating system), Android, serving a similar function to the Google Play store. The main repository, hosted by the project, contains only free software, free and o ...

Geokrety categories

Depending on its type, a GeoKret needs to be assigned one of the following categories: * Traditional geokret (e.g. a puppet) * Book * CD or

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

* Coin (for coin shaped Geokrety) * Human (for users of this service tracking themselves)

QR codes

Some GeoKrets have QR code printed on their labels, encoding their tracking code, After taking a photo and decoding the code, the user is automatically taken to the appropriate website to log a move of a GeoKret. Some fields are completed automatically according to information read from the QR code. No special application, except a QR code reader, is required for this task.

References

External links