How I've been doing it

[nexushoratio]

I have long been submitting various types of edits via Ingress. Enough that I use up all of my traditional daily counts constantly, and I have a huge backlog of stuff to submit. At least for the first few days, I will probably be able to go through all of my counts for this challenge, and might even finish off my backlog.

Basically, I was able to do about 120 contributions in < 90 minutes using the process below. While I talk about specific products, the important thing is this:

1. I use a desktop computer for all typing/editing
2. On device is only clicking and copy/pasting

I’ve not really tried it, but connecting a mouse/keyboard to the phone can probably work almost as well.

Personally, I find it easier to do a whole bunch of types of edits at once (just all titles/descriptions, or all photos, or all locations), than it is to make a bunch of different edits to the same portal. But that could just be me.

So, what I have been doing is making substantial use of Google Keep to organize my edits. I settled on Keep for a number of reasons:

1. Light enough that I can toggle back and forth between Keep and Ingress without the other having to constantly reload on my Android device (well, my newer one anyway, my 2016 era device didn’t have enough memory).
2. Keep has a browser interface so I can use a real keyboard to make my edits.
3. It is easy to share a portal from Ingress to Keep so I have the URL handy that allows me to use Ingress Intel get coordinates and satellite views to verify position.
4. I am a Google fan-boy having worked there for quite a while. Though I was laid off in Jan, 2023, when I started this stuff a few months ago, I still settled Keep because of the above. (I am also back at G so, yay, I’m employed again.)

So, over time, I have shared nearly every portal in areas I frequent to Keep, one portal per Keep item (I’ll call them cards). Each card starts with a Ingress style deep-link. When triggered on device, it opens Ingress to the portal, when triggered on a desktop, it opens up Intel to the portal.

On each card I keep the distance from my house and the title of the card (I have to manually fill those in). I use list mode with the checkboxes. Each card will have one line each for any title updates, description updates, coordinates and links to new photos.

Since Keep does not have an official API (boo) or native sorting (hiss), I create labels for distance ranges (00k, 01k, 02k, … 30k, 31k, etc), and add one as appropriate to each card. Similarly, I have labels for Title/Desc edits, Location, Photos, and also add those to the portals with those kinds of edits.

By visiting a specific distance label, then using select all (C-a), then archiving the notes, then select all, unarchive, I can move that group of portals to the top of the list. Not a perfect sort, but it helps me stay organized.

Anyway, with all of those cards handy, I can use the desktop browser the easily edit titles and descriptions in Keep. Similarly, if I’ve taken photos, I can add links to them. And if I need to fix the position, I can use GMaps to more easily find there point where it should go, click on the point in GMaps, and click the share button to get the latlng of that point and paste it into Keep.

Once I have a bunch of edits ready to go (or in my case, my daily allotment), I’ll do the following on device:

• Open Keep and visit one of the edit categories (say, Title/Desc), and open a card.
• Select all + copy for whatever value I need (for Keep, this is easy when using checkboxes)
• Press the deep-link, which opens the Ingress app, highlighting the portal in question.
• A couple of clicks in Ingress to select and open the portal and go into the edit menu.
• Click on title/desc as appropriate, click value to edit, select all, paste in the value I pulled from Keep
• If the portal needs both title and desc, I do the Android equivalent of alt-tab to get back to keep, select and copy the other value, alt-tab back to Ingress, paste again.
• After submitted the change, back out back to the main Ingress screen, then alt-tab back to Keep
• I’ll also have the same card open on Keep in the desktop and paste date I submitted the change as an indented value for the real value, check the box for the value, and remove the label from the card.

For Photos, it is not much different. Unsurprising, I use Google Photos for many of the same reasons I use Keep.

As I take photos, and they backup to the cloud, I use the webapp to capture the URL for each image and paste it into the appropriate Keep card.

When I’m ready to upload images:

• I go through a few cards on the desktop and open each image in its own tab
• I add each image to a new album called “queued”. Usually no more than 10 at a time, or I get confused.
• On device, I open the photos app, open that queued album, and it should only have to 10 or images I just added.
• (since I also took the photos on this device, they are likely still on it, so I don’t lose time syncing them from cloud back to phone)
• In Keep, I’ll go to the Photos category, and visit each card in turn. Similarly, I click on the link and open the portal in Ingress, this time for submitting a photo.
• Ingress (at least on Android), can select an image from the device, and that includes supporting albums in Photos (I would imagine the same is possible for others, but GPhotos is what I use). I visit the queued album, quickly find the one I want to submit, select it
• If the device I’m using happens to support scanning (not all of mine do), I get the option to [Upload later], I use that and delay uploading photos. I often have several photos per portal to upload, so I can grab the next one right away and so on.
• Visit next portal and repeat.
• Finally return to the main Ingress screen, Settings, and upload all pending images at once (good time to get a snack)
• For the batch of photos I just uploaded, add a comment in GPhoto to indicate it was submitted to reduce the changes I upload the same image more than once (learned that from experience!)
• Similarly, remove all of the photos from the queued album so it is ready for the next batch

For location edits, I use GMaps on the desktop and paste in the latlng from Keep, so I have a good visual reference to where I want to move the portal. Otherwise, again, visit each portal in turn do a location edit. Don’t forget, the in-app map can toggle between satellite view and map view, and map view will often have hallways and rooms for larger building (think shopping malls), which can help with placement.

As contributions are approved, I revisit the card in Keep and delete the accepted edit. If I notice an edit has stalled, I visit Wayfarer and see if I missed something. For photos, I visit the photo, all it to a “Done” album. Occasionally I’ll revisit the device and go through the images in the Done album and use the “Remove from device” feature to free up space on the phone. I happen to keep my photos. Deleting from GPhotos will delete from device as well, if that is preference.

Anyway, I’m probably lucky in that I have a bunch of edits that I want to do already pre-made, so this particular challenge works well for me.

Btw, I also do the above for nominations. Particularly handy when I have several photos I want to eventually add to a portal, I can have them all queued up and ready to go.

Sorry for rambling. Time to post some more contributions.

[nexushoratio]

Here are a couple of views:

Keep in the browser:

Keep on the phone:

Selecting a photo on the phone:

[seaprincesshnb]

I love a set of instructions. But i need a clear head to read through these. I dont even k ow what Keep is… Unfortunately, I’m afraid I’d start using it and Google would shelve it.

No, I’m not still bitter about Google Reader, why do you ask?

[nexushoratio]

Yeah, not my clearest docs. As much of a raw info dump than anything else.

Keep is a note taking app, akin, to say, Evernote.

But the fact that I use Keep is unimportant. What is important is that the app I use is easy to add stuff to by doing a “share portal” from Ingress (which gives me a link that works on both desktop and mobile), and I can edit from desktop. Keep was just at hand and I was already familiar with it.

[Jeroenix]

I just use a Google Docs file. Dig through historic archives on browser, type a description in the Docs file, and copy/paste on my phone. Oh, and Copy-Scanner-Link on desktop iitc helps to put any Wayspot into the Ingress scanner to extend your range. Speaking of range: increase the KM distance of your COMM, as to catch all the blatant spelling errors in portals you see coming by.

[nexushoratio]

Yup. The share-portal feature in the Ingress app creates the same deep-link as what IITC’s copy scanner link does (hence the name of IITC’s feature).

Fun fact: Those deep links are actually handled by Firebase’s Dynamic Link feature. It detects the environments and redirects to the appropriate local handler. Those create iOS or Android links that will not only open the appropriate app, but give an option to install the app if necessary. Or, a /pll=lat,lng intel link on a browser. That service will be turned down in August, so it will be interesting to see how all of the existing links will be handled. Manually constructing a Dynamic Link URL

One reason I like Keep over Docs is that, in my experience, sharing the link from Ingress to Keep creates a new note and gives me the option to add tags at the same time, so I can easily add a label for title/desc/location edit.

If Keep had a way to create a note from a URL, I was going to modify IITC to provide a link for that. (I actually use and contribute to IITC, but typically try to avoid mentioning that on this particular forum.