More comprehensive SL addresses

Hi there

Are more comprehensive SL addresses planned for the future? The only way to reach a specific location now is to go in-world, get a landmark and teleport there, or use SLURLs with clumsy numbers in it. Wouldn't it be nifty to be able to buy "domain names" like secondlife://monalisa.com? Subdomains could be nice too, like let's say secondlife://somesimname/jimmy You could enter these addresses in the location bar when you log in and use them in links on web pages.

That would be soooooo good. How many months I've been afraid of moving shop to a new place because I'll lose existing landmark and SLurl traffic...

I'd be up for it as well, very cool idea.

Interestingly enough, you sort of CAN do this. I could make http://store.lexneva.name/ redirect you to secondlife://Suffugium/128/128 or whatever coordinates I want. Someone could make a pretty interesting little business selling subdomains in .inSL.com or something, ie http://monalisa.insl.com or something. Could even see if there's a country with a top-level name of .SL that's willing to sell a domain to someone who doesn't live in the country. Looks like .SL is Sierra Leone.

The only way this won't work is trying to use these redirecting URLs in SL. The link would bounce out through your web-browser before coming back into SL and opening your map. I think, if LL finishes the HTML/web integration they've talked about a lot, that this would eventually never need to leave the SL client.

insl.com is a nice idea, but sadly it's taken. Some health club.

Great idea though

Good idea, Lex! BTW, "atsl.com" is available. So is "insl.net".

[Correction: no they're not. There's just "nobody home" there.]

Well, I mean, I'm sure someone can come up with something for the domain name. "Insecondlife.com" isn't taken, for example.

zomg... I knew atsl.com was too good to be true o_o
Is someone planning to go through with the idea? My thought was that people are less likely to follow a web URL than a SLurl...

I was actually thinking about making this functionality a part of SL itself. The new URL kind should start SL without opening a web browser and it should work by entering the address into the login screen (login right at the destination). That means it would be a part of the SL network and that you would have to buy it like the optional weekly entry into the search database.

Monalisa, I'm afraid that wouldn't be a good idea, speaking from the perspective of the technology behind domain names. When I buy a domain name, I expect to control it completely, and I have complete control over where VARIOUS services on that domain point, not just web browsing. I control who handles mail for the domain, where various subdomains point, etc. When I own foo.com, I control where http://foo.com, ftp://foo.com, telnet://foo.com, nntp://foo.com, and any other foo.com URL goes.

It'd be pretty darn rude for LL to just go willy-nilly "registering" SL-locations for domains that might already exist on the rest of the internet. For example, let's take your secondlife://monalisa.com idea. The domain monalisa.com already exists, and I'm pretty sure you're not the owner (unless you're "Netcorp". Deciding that secondlife://monalisa.com points to your property in SL, and ONLY in the SL client, would be a pretty huge ethical misstep for LL. As it is, I think it would PROBABLY have been more in keeping with the URL format specification (there is one) if secondlife:// URLs looked something like secondlife://suffugium.agni.lindenlab.com/128/128/0/ or something similar... but it's too late for that now.

There'd be one exception to what I said above. LL could try to modify the specification for secondlife:// URLs so that a fully-qualified domain in the first part (ie secondlife://monalisa.com) would mean that LL's servers would actually query the owner of the domain to find out where in second life THEY want their domain to point. It would be possible for domain owners to attach special records to their domain name that anyone could look up to determine where a secondlife:// URL on that domain points. That'd be pretty interesting to me, but these special DNS records are somewhat advanced and not easy for everyone to add through, for example, goDaddy.

<end of ubergeeky technical digression>

Ok let me rephrase. LL could set up an internal *equivalent* of domain names. I wasn't thinking about rerouting web pages. SL isn't a part of the WWW anyway. I was just outlining a comparison. I think I caused confusion by not being clear enough.

Lex, SL already "owns" the address space following "secondlife:". For example, this is a valid URL: "secondlife://ahern/0/0/0". Note that there's no IP address involved, no internet domain name.

(The two slashes after "secondlife:" are kinda funny -- those were intended when what follows is an IP address specification, and even then Jon Postel appologized to the world for it as unnecessary and unhelpful -- but, whatcha gonna do?)

The only problem with the OP's suggestion is that SL would need a way to distinguish island names from customer domains. Well, LL could choose any typographical convention they wanted, possibly following a format similar to IP host names.

Another way they could use is to take advantage of those extra slashes they unnecessarily put there:

secondlife://ahern is the "ahern" sector (or sim or whatever you call it)
secondlife:mydomain is a customer's domain

<no end to ubergeeky technical digressions!>

In any case, i think it would be cool if, when you type an internet address (i.e., anything with dots) into the address bar on the login page or map, the client would send an HTTP GET request there, and if what returns is an HTTP redirect with secondlife or slurl format, GO THERE.

Then we could have self-support and 3rd party support for ip-based domain names inside SL. Of course, they wouldn't be as pretty. Instead of entering "mydomain" or whatever, you'd enter "sl.mydomain.com" or "mydomain.com/sl" or "mydomain.insl.com" or "insl.com/mydomain".

Are we having fun yet?

It's true, I know there's really no need for the first portion of a secondlife:// url to be a domain name. But if LL's going to start registering things, it'd really behoove them to do it in a way that's extensible and usable by the rest of the world once they open their standards and allow grid interoperation like they keep saying they want to do. I just think it'd be neat to do it either via DNS TXT records or HTTP Redirects, rather than some proprietary DB only LL controls.

Too late: what does //ahern/10/10/10 mean? Nothing, except to SL.

You missed something.

http://monalisa.ATSL.com not http://monalisa.com

the ATSL.com URL would be owned by LL and users could register subdomains (premium perk?) to redirect where they'd like.

I didn't miss that... _I_ suggested that! The comment you're referring to was an argument in favor of doing this through http redirects, not just straight secondlife://monalisa.com as the OP suggested.

Now that I'm famous *woot* (backflip jumps in the air) I want a domain like that from LL

<..<
I don't read who posts are from anymore. Much less remember who the hell people ARE. *Sigh* Why can't we have nice little avatars like every other forum in existence?

We can then but they're a stupid size, none of the ones I usually use fit and look bad squashed down. But they fall perfectly under the file-size limit quite nicely

*Uploads an avatar he's already sized to 50x50*
*Refreshes page*
Huh, how about that. Avatars show up in our profile, not on each post. Ghey.

User CP >> Edit Options >> Show Avatars

It isn't that LL owns the secondlife:// address. That's not an address, it's a protocol tag, like http:// or ftp://.

Try entering, for example, secondlife://ahern/128/128/0/ in Firefox. On a machine that has SL installed it'll start SL and take you to that location. On a machine that doesn't have SL installed, you'll get an error message.

P2

I'm not really tech savvy about servers and IP addresses.. so "Ahern" is not an IP address, is it? So what it is "secondlife://"? Is it something real like "ftp://" or does it just fake an address? If secondlife://Ahern/1/1/1 is not an IP, why not make secondlife://mycooldomain.com available without the need to actually own the address on the web? Can anyone explain please?

I've been doing work on this kind of thing, where clicking a link on a web-page makes something happen within a program.

http://, ftp:// etc. etc. are all hooks. They are just names that allow your OS to look-up a program to handle the rest of the URL (the IP part and so-on).
So somewhere within the evil, evil Windows registry is an entry for http, and it will point to your web-browser, so that whenever a link starting with http is clicked, it will open your web-browser and pass-in the URL.

Similarly, secondlife: at the start of the URL (or to be more accurate, URI, a URI being the structure of a link) will map to Second Life on your computer, so any time a link starting with secondlife: is clicked, it will open.

You can define any you like, for example, with one quick registry edit on a Windows machine (don't know how to do it on others yet) I could define a haravikk: 'hook', which will open up some specific program (probably a really, really cool one =).

Important thing to note though is that http and ftp etc. are also network protocols, which complicates things a little, but can be ignored for this discussion.

If you're familiar with HTML then the more direct comparison is the "mailto:" prefix which can be used to tell someone's e-mail client to open and create a new message with some pre-specified settings, ready for you to fill in.