Hello Nethernauts,

I don't come bearing much new news this week.  I just wanted to let you know we're still working on putting the final touches on making the code suitable for open source land, so keep an eye out for that soon (tm).

Also, thanks again to everyone who has donated!  If you don't see your name on the Honorary Trustee list, it will be appearing soon, as it requires a code push to update, and we're trying to tie up the loose ends with open source.

This week be sure to check out a new Pathmaking Contest, some cool scripty-tools a player has created, and all the other offerings of this week's Nethercast of the Week.

Posts of the Week:

sgtwidget's Rekindling the Flame - A Contest (4/14):  Pathmakers  rise up!  A large prize pool is developing for a fun, new Mission contest.  Take a cue from the Missions of the Week below and bring back the lost art of Pathmaking!

nonchip's Nethernet Tools: A welcomed third-party site where you can stash truly private crates, get a private URL, and share bounties with your Allies.  There are also a few tricks to use on your Rivals so inquire within!

birch262's TNN Tag Cloud: Just a cool visual look at what was doing down on TNN a few days ago; it seems a spammer might have been in the news.


zosxaos's WARNING! ALL PLAYERS BE AWARE: Important: For your own safety, and to avoid becoming a Shombie, read this post carefully!


New Player of the Week:

soulathyia - a portal opening maniac!: This young player asked if there was any award for making it onto the TNN Leaderboards so early on in their Seering career. Well, this is it! Welcome to TNN, soulathyia!

Missions of the Week:

sgtwidget's Illuminating Words: Today, illustrations are mostly for picture books and PETA would raise hell if ever someone split calfskin for parchment. In times past, however, the most important books had the most beautiful illustrations and the ways of binding books were trade secrets, not the work of factories. Take a look at some of the secrets of manuscripts.

ocryus's A Random Wandering Through the Tubes...: Just a meandering through a bit of the flotsam and jetsam that gets caught in the intertubes. :)


As per last week, please keep the great links coming by way via PMail (@burdenday) or e-mail (joe@gamelayers dot com)!  All players whose names were mentioned in this week's NoW will receive 1000 DP, and 500 Pings as a token of my thanks for creating awesome content for us all to enjoy.

Don't forget to Donate to The Nethernet if you can!

Keep on keeping on, TNN Community!

The Nethernet was once called PMOG, but then the site was redesigned, and it was called The Nethernet; just some history for you kids. Today, thousands of players a minute ping our servers to see: did that last person finally vote in the latest episode of Sheep? Did a zombie Pathmaker wake up and decide to make a Mission?

Hosting The Nethernet turns out to really eat through servers, so much so we've had to relocate the server to Germany, where for whatever reason they have more servers. Go figure.

So we're launching a brand new in-game currency for The Nethernet called Sausage, a classic German treat. Every pageview will cost you a few Sausage. I recall how well Bacon went over, so you can earn Sausage in a number of ways, such as doing my laundry, washing my car, sending me random gifts, or giving my cat a bath. You can also use Visa, Mastercard, Diners Club (if you somehow have a Diners Club card, I'll throw in a billion extra Sausage, just for the lulz), or cash, but none of that Monopoly money!

I am sure a lot of you will have commentary on Sausage, but you will need to use Google Translate and post those feelings in German, because I've also outsourced my job to this guy who raises giant rabbits!

Long live Sausage and TNN!

-Joe

As the month of March comes to a close, looking back we've accomplished a lot together!  As of this moment, we've raised 70% of the needed $250 monthly costs for running the server.  If you'd like to help close that gap, please consider using one of the links in the sidebar here, and also see what incentives are currently being offered to donors!

We are very, very close to being ready to make the move to release TNN code as open source.  To answer some of the questions I've seen popping up on the forums, as I understand it, the code will be released under a license that allows you to run your own version of TNN on your own server, so long as you take the time to rebrand it, and release any changes to the code you make.

More importantly though, by releasing the code to the public, opportunities will be abound to extend, enhance, and improve on what we've built over the years.  I, for one, can't wait for a Google Chrome TNN extension, or an iPhone app!

This week be sure to check out the small collection of links below, especially The Guide to Forum Editing.  Don't forget about creating Missions either!

Posts of the Week:

rainboy's The Guide to Forum Editing: Ever wanted to strike-through your text? Maybe makes a statement with some underlining? How about block quoting something epic? You can do all that and more, it turns out!

sgtwidget's Better Recruiting?: A discussion has been bumped on how we can get some familiar and maybe not so familiar faces back to TNN. A companion post on the Number of Players also has sprung up with some observations of its own.

cuziam's Sheep in the blank...: The latest iteration of Sheep is looking for 6 more players! You have until the slots fill up for March 31st, so act fast!


barthisius' TNN Lottery: Another player-run lottery is picking up a little momentum. Why not buy a few tickets and try your luck?



Missions of the Week:

buddysprocket's A short tour of Paisley : Paisley is a town adjacent to - and in the shadow of - Glasgow. But Paisley has its own very strong identity, a rich history and a few notable attractions.

As per last week, please keep the great links coming by way via PMail (@burdenday) or e-mail (joe@gamelayers dot com)! All players whose names were mentioned in this week's NoW will receive 1000 DP, and 500 Pings as a token of my thanks for creating awesome content for us all to enjoy.

Keep on keeping on, TNN Community!

Freshly back from GDC 2010, I'm happy to announce that The Nethernet's code will soon be released as open source. More details will be coming, but this means players will have the opportunity to contribute code fixes to fix bugs, improve the server load, and possibly even create new features! Yes, this means The Nethernet itself will continue to operate as usual, and possibly even better thanks to knowledgeable players' help! Who knows what is to come?

As you will notice, this is Mission-heavy NoW. To complement that I am permanently increasing the DP you earn for taking Portals to 50, and DP you earn for taking a Mission to 15 per Lightpost. I hope this will encourage more Pathmakers to make Missions, and for all the Seers out there to keep up the good work I've been seeing these past few weeks!

This week enjoy the Missions, the extra DP you'll be getting from them, take the Portals, and maybe donate some cash or subscribe to support The Nethernet and earn yourself a title!

Posts of the Week:

burdenday's Your chance to become an Honorary Trustee or Founding Benefactors: Want a fancy title you can put on your business card? Check out a sweet new incentive for donating to the operation of The Nethernet!

Question of the Week:

dragonegg235 asks: Is it against the rules to...: Getting Naded and Mined is a fun part of The Nethernet, and a great way to blow off steam. However, if you're new to the game and you find someone trying to hold you for a ransom, you might want to ask me or a Steward for some help, or recruit some higher level Vigilantes to avenge you!

Missions of the Week:

quasivolatile's Logophilia - Love of Words: [An amazing Mission with tons of great Portals for anyone who loves the English language.] Logophilia - the love of words and word games. I appreciate words, perhaps a touch too much. Jointly with words comes language; thus, here are some word and language related websites. Some are resourceful, some silly, and some challenging... Essentially, this is just giving me a chance to glorify some deserving word-related websites, and you to go along for the ride, if you feel so inclined.

archmagemontigueiv's A brief History of Creatures in Fantasy (Part 1): [If you want to read up on your favorite Fantasy races, take this and the next 2 parts of this Mission.] The Fantasy Genre has introduced and reused a large number of creatures throughout its history. We start with the Good races, widely appearing in any number of Fantasy works, opposing the Forces of Darkness; and their Evil versions, appearing in not quite as many works, opposing their Goodly cousins.

loopygrrl8's Water, water everywhere...: [A short, but very important Mission on a substance we all use and likely take for granted.] ...but not a drop to drink. A mission with some information about bringing safe water to various countries of the world.

akary's High speed photography! Oooh!: [Some very cool pictures in slow motion.] High speed photography, like time lapse photography, brings us imagery we wouldn't otherwise be able to truly appreciate. Such a miniscule timeframe yields wonderous visual results that we can appreciate.

As per last week, please keep the great links coming by way via PMail (@burdenday) or e-mail (joe@gamelayers dot com)! All players whose names were mentioned in this week's NoW will receive 1000 DP, and 500 Pings as a token of my thanks for creating awesome content for us all to enjoy.

Have a great week, TNN Community!

It's been another week of populating the City of Internet, Everywhere, with Lightposts, Portals, Mines, and Crates, and one another with Grenades and St. Nicks. Through all the fireworks of fun, the following are some of the players, posts and Missions that stood out from the crowd.

This week, I'll be headed to GDC (Game Developers Conference), and I promise to take lots of pictures. Justin Hall, one of the original visionaries behind TNN will be speaking, and I am told there might even be some news about The Nethernet. We'll see!

This week you can explore space, the strange fictive(?) world of the Foundation, some too-specific pet sites, and I'll introduce you to The New Seer.

New Player of the Week:

disk: While taking Missions for this week's NoW, I stumbled across a lot of portals by disk. Seers are a rare breed of Nethernaut, and disk seems to be a natural. Take this week's Missions of the Week, and jump through a few of his creations. Welcome, disk!


Posts of the Week:

burdenday's You can now donate to The Nethernet: Want to join the Bevy of Real-Life Benefactors who have chipped in to support The Nethernet operations? Inquire within. Any and all help is greatly appreciated!

thunderlady's Corrupt a Wish: For some, there's nothing quite like smashing the hopes and dreams of others, and this is the forum game for those people!


rainboy's Werewolf IX: The Trial - FR Day 2 - Next Action 9PM Friday: Stay tuned for the final chapters of this iteration of Werewolf!  How will it end, and, perhaps, how will the next begin?

Missions of the Week:

octoedge's Hubble: The Eye of Space: [F-yeah, Space!] The Hubble Space Telescope, yes, you guessed it right. It's the telescope that's trying to answer the question on everybody's mind, "Is anyone out there?"......Find out about the wondrous telescope and it's finds in this mission. Come across Facts, Pictures and everything you need to know about Hubble.

deimos56's A brief tour of the Foundation: [A very interesting collective fictive wiki project - this should be right up the alley of many TNN players!] Enter the somewhat disturbing world of the Foundation, and learn of things man was not meant to know.

artoo's Weirdly Specific Yet Adorable Animal-Related Sites: [Start the week off with a chuckle at our furry friends.] This mission takes you across the web to see some of the most oddly specific (and completely adorable) animal photo repositories out there. Definitely good for a dose of "aww," or maybe in some cases, a dose of "Why does this exist?"

Please keep the great links coming by way via PMail (@burdenday) or e-mail (joe@gamelayers dot com)! All players whose names were mentioned in this week's NoW will receive 1000 DP, and 500 Pings as a token of my thanks for creating excellent content this week.

Have a great week, Nethernetters!

Good afternoon, players of The Nethernet, residents of the City of Internet, Everywhere!

Yesterday, I posted on the forums letting you know that you can now donate to the operation of The Nethernet, something a number of players have requested during the long history of our game.

I want to personally thank animel8, and ivbela, who have already graciously contributed to the cause out of the gates!  In their honor, you'll earn double DP for the rest of today.

If you, too, would like to toss a few bones the way of The Nethernet, you can do so from The Nethernet listing on Mozilla or using the buttons in the sidebar right here on the blog. And let me tell you anything, big or small, is very much appreciated.

If you're down on hard times, no worries, game on!

Thanks again for making The Nethernet truly a community driven project.

-burdenday, your Community Liaison

The Nethercast is back, once again! Strutting our new digs here on Blogger, we'll see how formatting turns out with a bounty of great content. Read on!

Enjoy!

Posts of the Week:



hotpockets's Dear Fellow Destroyers: I had been wondering what hotpockets was doing with the tens of thousands of Mines he had been purchasing. Now it's clear!



sobekneferu's Looking to transport another 20,000 players: Help celebrate perhaps the most prolific Seer in PMOG/TNN history! With well over 20,000 transported, it's safe to say that Sobekneferu is the McDonald's Drivethru of the Internet.



stephen's The DP Casino Lives!: An addiction for many, the source of riches for some, if you find yourself with some extra DP in your pocket, try giving the PMOG Slots a pull or two. (Yes - it's safe.)



rainboy's Werewolf The Trial - R4 Day - Sunset 9PM Monday: Quite possibly the most popular forum game happening now, check out Werewolf the Trial, happening now.



Missions of the Week:



sgtwidget's Netherboost: There are many wonderful Firefox extensions out there - and plenty of missions dedicated to them - so I'm focusing this specifically on extensions that make the Nethernet easier or more fun to use. Learn how to get more involved with TNN's community, un-break old missions and never be Rickroll'd again.



sgtwidget's Riddle Me This: A Puzzle Mission without Puzzle Posts: The pathmaker class is one of limited tools: only the lightpost and its upgrade, the puzzle post are at their disposal and the ambitious young Pathmaker must wait until they have reached Level 7 to employ the latter of these. And even then, puzzle posts are expensive. Puzzle missions are strictly the province of more experienced Pathmakers. Or are they? This mission goes beyond puzzle posts, exploring other ways to riddle your readers.


Please keep the great links coming by way via PMail (@burdenday) or e-mail (joe@gamelayers dot com)!

Have a great week, Nethernauts!