Greetings everyone!
I just discovered a new way to communicate in second life! Or perhaps not. Some, or many of you may already know about this, or use it also. If so, please forgive me for my ignorance, for I am still new here.
Anyway, I found it much more efficient than chat or instant messaging. Check it out.
I have a friend who also comes to second life. She lives in Norway, and I live in the great state of Alaska (United States for those who don't know) we have over 4000 miles distance between us.
We've been communicating outside of second life for some time now through video phone. We both use Windows live messenger (a free program by the way) to talk to each other in real time. It works pretty good most of the time considering our distance from each other.
Anyway, we were talking online earlier today, (on Windows live messenger) and decided I would take her shopping in second life. We were getting ready to logon to second life, when we both just kind of simultaneously had the idea of leaving Windows live messenger open when when we logged on. Of course we didn't know what would happen, but were excited to find out. Would Windows live crash, with second life crash, would it even work. We had to find out!
As I'm sure you've all figured out, it worked! We logged to second life with Windows live messenger still open, and we could talk to each other in real time! It was cool!
And some of the neat things we figured out early on were, what a time saver it was for accomplishing tasks that require two people to communicate. Instead of us having to type questions and answers to find out what she wanted (this is a woman who is shopping remember) all I had to do was simply ask her if she liked this, or that, or show me which one etc. etc. and she simply told me, and clicked on the item. It made it so easy that I ended up buying her more than just a pair of shoes! (I think she liked that) and she ended the buying me some things also! Laughs!
We had a lot of fun! And it certainly opened up a whole new way of interacting in second life.
Although I must say it was not flawless. When we were first rezing, or when there was a lot going on around us, we would get some heavy break up in our voice communication, there were times when we had to ask the other to repeat their comment, or question. But still, it was more like real life, talking to each other, instead of sticking our hands out in front of us and wiggling our fingers (does anybody talk like that in real life) and doing the chat, instant messaging thing.
Now if you think about it, this should be the natural evolution of second life. The technology is already there, and I'm sure it could be integrated into the second life program. Although Linden Labs has quite a few other priorities to see to before they get to this point I'm sure.
But for those of you who have at least a microphone for your computer (oh let's face it, who doesn't. And if you don't go buy one they don't cost anything) and you are not running second life near or at the minimum requirements, and you have enough RAM, download Windows live messenger (it's free and it doesn't cost anything to talk to each other) and give it a try!
My friend and I have both decided that next time we come to second life together we are going to explore voice communication further. Although only two of us were communicating in this way (no one else could know what was going on here, including Linden Labs) now that I think about it you probably could include more than two people. Perhaps even get a group of people online all at once talking to each other. I don't know.
Anyway, I don't know if this was the right place to post this message (hope I'm not pissing a mod off) but I thought perhaps other people might find this interesting and want to try it themselves.
If so, good luck, hope it works for you, have fun! Peace out