Netizen

Monday, June 24, 2013

Ingress: 5 Times More Players, 10 Times More Portals

I believe the game has reached that point where it is ready for five times as many players. Niantic not long back sent out five invites to each agent. I believe it has also been approving more requests made directly to it through its site for membership.

When you have five times more players, you can not have the same number of portals. You can not even have five times more portals. You want 10 times more portals - at least 10 - for those five times as many players.

All that increases the velocity of the game. The game changes as you keep adding more and more people to it. Just like the Internet changed as more and more computers got connected to it.

There are agents today who feel like they pretty much know everyone who is playing. That will soon no longer be true. You ride the subway, but you don't know everyone who is on the train. You hardly know anyone who is on the train. Ingress has to reach for those scales.

I think Niantic should approve more portals faster. One should not have to wait two months to get a portal approved. The wait should be more like two weeks.

Ugh, Finally

Hotmail Has Come A Long Way

I have been aware of Microsoft's overhaul of its email service, but I only today tried to log in and use it. (I am a comfortable, happy user of Gmail) And, gosh, it is so impressive. It is a cleaner experience than Gmail. Although I don't see me switching. I still have my hotmail address from the late 1990s before Microsoft bought it. And it still works fine.

Yahoo Mail, on the other hand, continues to be confounding. It still is so very loaded. It is like having at least three different televisions on in your living room, at least two of which were turned on by others. I logged in there as well this morning. After trying to delete 25 messages at a time for over 30 minutes I gave up. Can I please have the option to delete all 12,000 messages in my inbox at once? Please? Maybe the feature exists, but with three televisions on, it is hard to figure out. With Hotmail on the other hand I was able to delete all 180 messages in the inbox at once. Okay, that is a hint. Yahoo's spam filter is sub par.

Conventional Crystalline Silicon

Solar is sexy.

What Tech Is Next for the Solar Industry?

conventional crystalline silicon ..... would bring the direct cost of solar power to six cents per kilowatt-hour, which is cheaper than the average cost expected for power from new natural gas power plants ..... screen-printing techniques can produce lines as thin as 30 micrometers .... the ability to make them on a flexible sheet of glass raises the possibility of continuous roll-to-roll manufacturing (like printing newspapers), which can reduce the cost per watt by increasing production. ... a two-sided solar cell that can absorb light from both the front and back. .... during some parts of the day, sunlight falls on the land between rows of solar panels in a solar power plant. That light reflects onto the back of the panels and could be harvested to increase the power output. ... Where a one-sided solar panel might generate 340 watts, a two-sided one might generate up to 400 watts. .... Such solar panels could be mounted vertically, like a fence, so that one side collects sunlight in the morning, and the other in the afternoon. That would make it possible to install the solar panels on very little land—they could serve as noise barriers along highways .... Adding one semiconductor could boost efficiencies from the 20 to 25 percent range to around 40 percent. Adding another could make efficiencies as high as 50 percent feasible, which would cut in half the number of solar panels needed for a given installation. The challenge is to produce good connections between these semiconductors, something made challenging by the arrangement of silicon atoms in crystalline silicon.

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Ingress: Reporting tomhuze

Dear Niantic.

Yesterday afternoon this guy tomhuze (Ingress handle) and some of his team members spent an afternoon reporting on half the portals in my neighborhood of Jackson Heights in New York City. This is only the latest step in a vendetta campaign that has been going on for weeks now. We are both blue agents.

I have largely built my home territory of Jackson Heights (Ingress: I Can Retire Now) with enormous work over months. By now I believe it is the top home territory in the city, in terms of how many portals it has, and the diversity of portals it has. You can find L1-L7 portals in the territory on most days of the week. It is the top Ingress destination in Queens, for its central geographical location and for the large number of portals. I hope to make it even better: I expect more portals to go live, I expect more close clusters to emerge, and I expect to make more portal submissions, especially all along the 7 train track for what I call "the Disney experience," so agents on both sides can play the game while riding the train. I think it is going to be the top Ingress experience in the city.

A home territory is one where the majority of portals are your submissions. It is not the territory you happen to live in.

I urge you to disregard all his requests to wipe out my portals. They are all legitimate submissions of churches, sculptures, artwork, paintings, murals and so on. Their geographical locations get captured by the camera itself, as you very well know. These portals that have doubled and tripled in count have greatly enhanced the gameplay for local and visiting agents on both sides.

And I would like to point out that my top request right now is that you add a Block User feature for the COMM. The COMM has got to be the least refined feature of the Ingress gaming app. And add a third section. There is All COMM, there is Faction Chat, and there is a need for a private section. Only people you explicitly approve are part of that private section. Kind of like on Facebook you have your social circle, I have mine, and we might even have some mutual contacts. Each agent's private COMM would be unique to that agent.

I believe until you add the Block User feature I am just going to avoid the COMM like I did all the way to hitting Level 8, but back then it was because all the handles and portals came across as gibberish to me. Now it is because there is just too much noise and pollution on the COMM, too much small talk and name calling, bitterness and outright harassment.

So this guy calls himself leader of the NYC Resistance. The vast majority of agents on both sides are not members of organized groups. You can play this game just fine on your own. I only discovered the group after I hit Level 8. Most challenges in the game are on the way to Level 8. Active members are people who show up for your events. Last I knew maybe 15-20 people showed up for his events. That is out of hundreds of agents in the city, soon to go into the thousands.

I think enhancing the social aspects of the game is a good thing. And dudes like tomhuze have put in a lot of work into bringing forth that social experience for people who like that kind of social experience that seems to be heavily organized around drinking beer, attending L8 farm events and going to destroy only high level portals. There are some values that the group has come up with, for example this weird idea that AP does not matter after you hit Level 8. After you hit Level 8 it is more about just plain hanging out with other Level 8s. To each his her own.

We had a falling out a few weeks ago and I am no longer a part of his G+ groups. Since I have focused on building my home territory to go on to build a Resistance team of my own with a different value system. There are only two global teams possible. But you can create as many local teams as you want. Team building is the ultimate challenge in the game, I believe.

Ingress should not be made into a complex game if Niantic is to meet its goal of taking this game to a billion people. By the way, guys like tomhuze happen to think "everyone who wants to play this game is already playing it and when the game goes public maybe the numbers will go up by a factor of two or three at most," a view I strongly disagree with.

But it should be possible to find new challenges in the game, and a lot of that is to do with team building. When you build large, complex teams you can organize large, complex events, and that option should be there. But right now that is the app's weakest link in the chain. It is because the COMM is so poorly designed. I once blogged months ago that Ingress could emerge a major force for world peace. But right now I am thinking it might start new wars! Social filters ought be an option.

And, by the way, I love Google like some people love Apple. You can just do a search on the company's name at my blog and you will see that. (Google Balloon: More Promising Than Google Fiber, Google Glass And Google Car)

In 2010 a blog post I wrote inspired Fred Wilson to put forth a blog post on the same theme that became his most popular blog post for that year, called Mobile First. Ingress is way more than just a game for me. It brings mobile, gaming, local, global, and social -- some of the major trends in tech over the past few years -- all together and so I see it as a major window into the future of tech itself.

This guy's biggest contribution to the game in the city is his whole secrecy paradigm. People are doing L8 farms better everywhere else in the world but he thinks it is a concept he came up with. That paradigm dominates the thinking in both teams in the city and that is why New York City is nowhere on the global Ingress map. I hope to change that. I think both teams should actively blog about their exploits and adventures and should make attempts to become part of the official Ingress report. Our falling out was on this matter.

Ingress: Legitimate Secrets
Ingress NYC Resistance "Secrets"

I have been a fairly passionate player, I started on February 1 and am currently past six million in AP.

Ingress: 300K In 2 Hours 15 Minutes
Level 8 In A Month

Ingress: Open Source Organization And Organic Leadership
Ingress: State Of The Game: New York City (2)

Ingress: Linking And Fielding Types
Ingress: Jackson Heights Mysteries
Ingress: The Squad
Ingress: The Squad: Racially Coded Language
Ingress: Portal Building, Field Building, Farm Building, Team Building
Ingress: Pendulum Swings In Team Momentum
Ingress: Portal Submissions Are The Bomb
Ingress: State Of The Game: New York City
Ingress: That Dosa Thang!
Ingress: L8 Farms: Getting 8 People To Show Up
Ingress: Team? What Team?
Ingress And Complex Strategies
Ingress: L8 Farm Types
Ingress: The Game Changes
Ingress Suggestion: Portal Enhancements
Ingress: Phase 3
Ingress: High Level Stuff
Ingress: A Great Game For The Knowledge Worker

Ingress Tips
Ingress And Location

Looking to forward to keep working on my home territory, and looking forward to building my team once you do your part and rework the COMM.

Thank you.

paramendra (Ingress handle)

Monday, June 17, 2013

Ingress: Open Source Organization And Organic Leadership

Team building is part of gameplay.

But leadership can not be first come, first serve. And it can not be elected. And it can not be based on AP. Some of the agents with the highest AP seem to have little interest in leadership roles. Some armchair agents seem to be the most enthusiastic about leadership functions, or at least the way they define it.

This game is designed for solo action. You just can't go wrong. Proof is that over 90% of the agents are not active members of this or that organized group in the city. Less than 10% that are also mostly engage in solo action.

The only team building seems to be that there are Google Plus groups. Those groups give you access to events. Any member can create events. If you are a L8 agent the venue and time of future L8 farm events are prized information. But for months now the Intel map has been sufficient for me to find me L7 and L8 farms. You learn where to look, what times to look. And you learn L8 ammunition is so overrated. And it is much less headache. You find, you show up, you hack to burnout, you leave. Also, I have learned the great importance of non L8 ammo. L4 resonators are just the most amazing thing. The ammo I most look for right now are (1) local portal keys and (2) very rare shields. I have not lacked for L8 ammo. I have close to 400 L8 bursters right now.

This game is not designed for a hierarchical organization. And it is not designed for hierarchical or even elected leadership. Open Source Organization is one where there is no real seniority. Organic Leadership is anyone who can put in the effort to build the knowledge base and can earn respect will get to engage in leadership functions. And anyone who has time.

Time is the most precious ammo in the game. Time and the willingness to show up. This game is all about showing up. If you can show up you win. If you can get your team members to show up, you win.

Organic leadership is that you aspire to perform leadership functions, and you put in the effort to accumulate the knowledge (this is not a complex game, there is not a ton you need to know), and you have the time to perform leadership functions. And you have to earn the respect of your team members. And, most important, you have to know and make peace with the fact that you can not tell anyone what to do. Their following your suggestions and advice and hints is strictly on a voluntary basis. This is a game, it is supposed to be fun. Nobody signed up so you could tell them what to do.

But eager agents will listen. L1 to L7 agents might appreciate getting help leveling up. Other L8 agents might appreciate your tips and tricks. There are techniques involved.

But the bottomline is this is a game designed for solo action. You are not crippled without a team. Actually a team can get in the way of gameplay. The last time I was part of an organized team, it felt to me like all the guys did was drink beer, attend L8 farm events, and claim and reclaim their local vanity portals. At some point it starts feeling mindless. And of course Huze feels like he has patented the whole idea of L8 farms, something that is being done better everywhere else in the world. That guy's contribution to the game in the city is the whole patented secrecy paradigm, which is the reason NYC is nowhere on the global Ingress map.

Parting ways for me has meant reclaiming the fun in the game. This game helps you get to know a neighborhood like a local. I am still not done with the Financial District. I think I might need to make at least 10 more visits to undo that maze. And there are many, many neighborhoods across the city. And also team building is the ultimate challenge in the game.

You build portals. Then you build farms. Then you graduate to home territory building. That is my primary focus right now. Then I hope to move on to team building. There are only two global teams possible, but you can build as many local teams as you want.

NYC Enlightened, fear the arrival of The Squad.

The beauty of the way the game has been designed is there is no real need for The Squad to coordinate with timtomhuze, the old team that is losing territory like there were no tomorrow.

Mahatma Gandhi - "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win."

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Monday, June 24, 2013