Houston Hall in the West Village on 222 Houston (take the 1 train to Houston and it is steps away) is an awesome place. I like the bigness of it. And there is an authentic ambience. Two big screens of sports help too. Friday and Saturday evenings here are epic, if you like large crowds.
I happen to think complex fielding is the most exciting aspect of the game, and the most challenging, certainly. I would like to suggest that the tri-state Resistance attempt some complex fielding. That is one aspect where the tri-state agents have been sorely lacking in.
The six zones I have identified in the first image are all blue strongholds. As in, we got the territory and we got the agents who have plenty of keys to the portals there. All we now need is some coordination. First your circle the city, and not only do you circle it but you maintain the fortress. If any field is brought down, you build it back up right away. Maintaining the fortress is also going to bring up opportunities to connect the zones in ways that we paint the whole city blue, from afar.
Step 2 would be to fan out as shown in the second image. Talk about squeezing the Enlightened. Once these two stages of fielding have been completed the game in the city is going to be much more fun for the Resistance.
Being able to see how many keys you have to a portal before you link to it is great. I have over 30 portals that I like to have at least one key of. But I also want to link and field - the most fun part of the game.
I think this scanner favors agents who walk to agents who drive around in cars. That is also a plus. The car advantage might have been diminished. If Ingress could turn America into a walking nation, that would be trillions in health care savings. That alone would make the game worth it. I was not overweight when I started playing, but I have lost weight playing. That is a good thing. My waistline is slimmer. Walking is the best aspect of the game. I was already a walking maniac before the game. Now I am even more so.
What they have not worked on is the COMM. Unless they fundamentally rework the COMM the app is not tremendously helping the social aspects of the game. The COMM is currently the weak link in the chain.
My only bigger gripe than the COMM is that Niantic is not approving portals fast enough. Unless New York City has 10 times more portals it can not accommodate its current batch of players, let alone the expected five times increase in player numbers. I would like to attempt complex fielding, but that is currently not possible. Please approve my 1,000 portal submissions already.
New York is a big city. If you take the metro region into account, it perhaps is the biggest city in the world.
The first big American city I lived in for a few months was Philadelphia. I would walk to work every morning. It was a 40 minute walk from UPenn near where I was staying to downtown. Half way through the walk you started seeing the tall buildings. And I would be like wow. That wow factor never left me those few months.
I was in Philly for a few hours in January. I went downtown. It felt like a small town.
New York City is big, like really big. Take the metro region into account, and it is perhaps the biggest city in the world.
Philadelphia was the first big American city I lived in for a few months. I was with a dot com. I would walk to work every morning, a 40 minute walk from U Penn near where I lived, near the movie theater. When I hit downtown, I'd look up. The buildings looked so mesmerizingly tall.
I was in Philadelphia for an event in January for a few hours. The city felt like a small town.
In tech, the 2010s belong to New York City, the way the late 1990s belonged to Silicon Valley. New York City has a good start. The 2010s belong to the mobile web, or at least the first half clearly does. And the mobile web - unlike the big screen web, which itself is a pretty global phenomenon - is the most global of phenomena. And New York City is the most global of cities. NYC has a geographical advantage.
That is not me discounting nanotech. Nanotechnology swept the Nobel prizes this year. That should tell you. If you could find the right nano startups to invest in right now, you could be looking at some astronomical returns in a decade, but it is not easy to pick winners. Much activity ends up being froth.
When it comes to web technology, this coming decade I think belongs to New York City. Image via Wikipedia
The Valley has matured. Let them build hardware and data centers. Let them do search. But then Google is a bi-coastal company. A lot of people don't realize the size of Google's presence in New York City. They have rented out an entire block. Some day I am going to go check it out.
This is not me discounting clean tech. It is my firm belief America could see a second industrial revolution based on clean tech. This is not me discounting biotech either. But then NYC could do nano, clean and bio as good as anyone else too. Thanks to the subway, we already are one of the lower carbon emission cities in the country. And we stand to benefit from Google Wind.
Yesterday I called Fred Wilson a DJ. (Fred Wilson: DJ) Today my suspicions have been further confirmed. His blog post today is Nice Analogy. This dude who is the most visible venture capitalist in New York City, and perhaps the most loved VC among all the local entrepreneurs he has never invested in and likely never will since he can only invest in so many per year, this guy is a serious music fanatic.
Shane Snow: Tech StartUps Vs Rock Bands"....I started 3 different bands in college. In each one, we dreamed of making it big, landing a record deal, and having hot Japanese chicks scream our song lyrics at us when we toured Asia.....and having geeky Rails programmers whisper as I pass them in the hall at NerdCon...."
Fred Wilson: Nice Analogy
Harry DeMott: More On The Middle Class The VC And The Music Industry: Not As Different As You Might Imagine
New York Times: Ticketmaster Joins Live Nation, And An Industry Quakes"....bands are making the bulk of their income from concerts....Alliances shift, backs are stabbed and most people have at least three agendas, only one of which they will discuss candidly....“When the Internet came about the artist realized, well hang on, you can’t steal a ticket for a seat, so we started to lean more toward, I don’t really want a record deal, I want to be aligned with somebody who can help me sell tickets. But then I want a company that can use that music and that seat to get ancillary revenues” — from things like food, beverages and sponsorships — “to help me survive.”" ...... “The ticket was underpriced 40 years ago” ...... Azoff was part of the defiant counterculture but was fluent in the language of contracts and comfortable mixing it up in corporate suites. He also had great intuition about how to psychologically size up both foes and friends, and he could sweet-talk and charm as convincingly as he could erupt in rage..... For years, neither promoter nor ticketer has considered fans as the first priority.....
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