Hello gang, I signed up with the listserv just a week ago and I've been watching the discussions about the new numbering. Although, I doubt my opinion counts for anything.. I'll give it anyway. I haven't really researched this topic yet, so I apologize in advance if these points have already been made. So, as the song goes: "I will dispense this advice, now:" I do development work, and often need to come up with identifier schemas that maximize the amount of possibilities as well as maintain a certain level of knowing what the item refers to, without having to know its full description. One possibility (type based identifier): I would reserve the first character for type of cache. Here are some examples: T=Traditional, L=Locationless, V=Virtual, M=Multi, U=Unkown etc. Then the remainder 5 characters could be used for ID. (Of course, you could dramatically increase the number of ID's by going with a base 31 as has been discussed.) If we later run out of space for T(raditional) cache numbers, you can simply assign a secondary character, say B. This would be similar how we used to only have 1-800 numbers, but we ran out, so now the prefix could be 800, 888, etc. Another possibility (location based identifier): Reserve the first 2 characters as location indicators: AZ, PA, TX (states) and CH, IL, DU, RU (countries, etc.) This does however unfairly limit the number of caches within a state or country. As we all know, AZ would probably need more numbers than RI. ;) Thanks, TheWebbman Webb Pickersgill