I’ve recruited my 4-year old daughter to go “treasure hunting” (aka geocaching) with me. I’ve tried GeoBeagle before, with varying degrees of success. Usually I just get the cache info in GeoBeagle and input it as a waypoint in Maverick. Most recently I’ve been playing with c:geo, and find it to be much better (and cheaper. I’ll get to that later).

C:geo is more of a stand-alone application than GeoBeagle (or any other Android app I’ve tried). Like other geocaching apps, c:geo works with geocaching.com. Unlike GeoBeagle, you do not need a premium (ie: paid) geocaching.com account to download and store caches on your phone — c:geo will let you cache the locations directly. You can do this by inputting a geocode, lat/long, address, keyword, username, near you, live map (awesome feature), etc.

In addition c:geo can navigate you to the cache using Google Maps (great if you’re driving, as you get voice navigation as well), radar (have GPS Status installed), or compass. In a way, getting to the cache is almost too easy. And considering other accuracy validation I’ve done (which will be presented at the 33rd Applied Geography Conference in October 2010), I know the G1, and Droid Incredible, can navigate there within the apps’ reported accuracy.

Overall, if you’re looking for a really good, feature-packed, free geocaching app, I’d recommend c:geo. One caveat. I couldn’t manage to log in with c:geo until I re-downloaded and signed in with GeoBeagle. Only then would c:geo successfully log in. If you have a problem registering c:geo with geocaching.com, I suggest this work around. Happy caching!