Standalone IM client?

Hi,

Been searching a bit but havnt found much info on this. How about making a standalone IM client to use for communication with you SL friends while not in SL - thought that would be really conventient and improve the socialization between SL users. I've seen there is an OSX widget out there (Im XP though), so maybe it does that. Would also be nice to see who is online. (I know you can see who's online on the SL homepage, and that you can comunicate with Online usuers via IM/Email, but still... a little simple messenger client would great)

It's been requested for ages. It seems fairly simple to crank out in a few hours, at least a basic version, since most of the important backend is all there.

Why it hasn't happened, I don't know.

It's coming. They're going to swap out the IM subsystem for an open standard protocol - Jabber. This means that you will be able to connect to SL from any Jabber-compatible IM client.

Ah. So it's yet another feature that will never happen because they have grand plans that they will never get around to doing, instead of doing something now that will work just fine.

Hm ... what is point of not just using email tom IM?

Mel

Well, for one, it's a pain in the ass to have to send an e-mail every time you want to say "hi" to someone. Might as well simply e-mail them outright.

Second, it's effectivly one-way - you can't initiate a conversation from out-world.

Third, many people disable IM-to-email, because it can get rather spammy.

I can imagine that a lot of people play SL in full screen, so they wouldn't notice an incoming email. SL wouldn't have the need for a built-in IM system anyway. IRC, AIM, MSN, you name it, all do the same thing. But the in-world IM can tie users to their respective profiles, is seen withing the client instantly and works with groups.

Personally, I'd like to see an external IM client for the times I am not able to log in myself, but on the other paw I'd want to have an "Ignore IMs from out-world" option, so I can prevent people from spamming. Either this, or the external client would require people to authenticate with SL before sending an IM.

Well, you can send an email from outside as an IM to someone inside SL. I do that often on Cosy Island. Read this thread, if you want to know about our solution: http://cosyhome.org/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=4;t=12;st=0. Our great scripter Sky Honey might be able to support you.

Mel

Its a PITA that shouldn't be needed.

You can, but they have to send you an IM first that you've had redirected to you email. The in-world ID number is also dynamic (it's not your permanent avatar UUID), so after a couple of days or a week it expires, leaving you with no way to initiate contact from outside SL without first receiving an IM from inside.

I like this idea, but it still leaves me (and some others I'm sure) out of the loop. At work, I have Tillian which is AIM/YIM compatible, and I can use Yahoo! email so I'm not totally unreachable. The main thing such a program might do is to let me see who of my friends list are on without having to access the main SL account page.

Cindy, please read the mentioned thread in our community forum. The trick is to have a permanent object in world that receives your email and forwards it as IM to the wanted avie.

Mel

I did, Mel, and while it's a great idea it's still limited to those registered with that object. An SL-wide solution would be much preferable, especially with members joining and leaving all the time. (I think about half of my friends' list from a year ago has disappeared from the face of the earth).

There is at least one product for sale in SL that does something similar. You rez it, put cards for the people you want to be able to IM inside of it (the cards contain their keys), and then you can email the object and it will IM them.

The problem is that llInstantMessage does not send an actual IM that shows up in an IM window. As that thread mentions, what it does is dump the message into chat (similar to using llOwnerSay).

If someone is in a busy location, they might miss that one green line of text that shows up in the normal chat, or assume it's just attachment spam. In fact, I purchased an object like this and at first I thought it was not working, as the person I was trying to contact was in a club and was watching for an actual IM.

I also would love to have an IM client to use outside of game. Jabber would be great. And I'm sure anything like this that LL would implement would require a login first.


Kyushu

I agree. In this case an external client like ICQ would be a good choice. Why not just use this for chatting if you don't want to go inworld at all.

But anyway, a SL integrated solution would not be something I would complain about.

@Kyushu: okay, got your point.

Mel

Definitely a problem. I made mine more noticeable, but it's not anything like the IM *bing*.


If LL use Jabber as the IM protocol, every avatar will have a Jabber account on the LL Jabber Server. SL could simply have a checkbox in preferences to allow you to be contacted from outside, and the conversation would take place in the SL IM window. A dialog could be used to type in an account name and initiate the conversation from SL with any Jabber account outside SL. LL could also allow us to use any Jabber client with our SL Jabber ID, so we can have conversations with our friends in SL without needing to bother with having another Jabber account. The friends list could show "online in SL" or "online in outside IM client", but the conversation would work the same way. Simple, perfect integration.