Linking your AV with an external web site

Hello guys,

As many of you know, I'm in the process of writing a web site that will require AV links. In order to serve the community better, I would appreciate comments on your preferred method of linking your SL AV(s) to an external web site. This is the first in a series of direct queries I will be presenting to the forums for input on various aspects of the web site - the resulting web site will be very much formed by you and your answers here.

First, for those who are not familiar with LSL and/or AV keys, let me explain a couple things. Each AV has a "key" which is unique to that AV. An LSL script can send objects, transfer money, send IMs, and otherwise interact with the AV via this key. To link these AV keys to an external web site requires some reasonably secure method of obtaining this key and sending it to the web site. Unfortunately, there is currently no direct way in LSL to find an AV key from an AV name. In other words, the AV generally has to interact with something first for a scripter to use it's key. This presents a problem to the scripter if the AV is offline, in another SIM, etc.

This problem has been tackled in several ways. I know of at least one "Name2Key" service that attempts to track as many Second Life citizens as possible. While I have no doubt that this is a useful service, I would prefer not to rely on an outside source for some important reasons (the potential to be given an incorrect key is of paramount importance because the site will involve escrow, for one.)

Gaming Open Market is probably the oldest and most well-known method of AV linking. I think GOM's track record speaks for itself and one could make a strong argument that their preferred method of linking AVs is a model worth immitating. It works like this:

1. <You have an account with GOM's web site>
2. You enter your AV's first and last name exactly as it appears in SL
3. The web site provides a secure password for you
4. You go to a terminal in-game and say the password with a phrase such as "activate abcdef" and your AV is now linked to the web site.

Obviously, this is quite a secure way of handling things and has been around for a long time. Is it the most user friendly? Perhaps not compared to other systems. SL Boutique uses a method which is quite easy to use. The method is:

1. <You sign up for an SL Boutique account, including an AV name>
2. You go to a terminal in SL and say "activate" and your AV is now linked to the web site

That's quite user friendly but what if you have several AVs to link? I would definitely like to give the option to link more than one AV to the same account. In fact, I'd like to provide the ability for more than one AV to have any level of access to the account based on access levels. That feature is outside this discussion but linking multiple AVs is the point.

Before I wrap this up, I'd just like to say that this project has really given me a huge amount of respect for the folks at GOM, SecondServer.Net, and SL Boutique (among others!) for the elegant solutions they have created.

All your comments are very much appreciated.

Thanks,
Jack Lambert

Since we're dealing with cash, we felt that the added security of a validation code was necessary. This code is unique for each avatar name and account info, and helps ensure that the person in control of the GOM account, and the person behind the avatar are, in fact, one and the same.

Without the unique validation code (i.e. if you request an av link, then simply say "activate" it would be simple enough for Joe User to request a link of several avatars he wasn't actually in control of. If the person behind the av wasn't careful, they could end up with their avatar linked to the wrong account. Imagine the sitcom-esque wackiness that would ensue as Jane Avatar deposits L$, and finds them all going to Joe User's GOM account. Good times all around.

IW validation is a must!