IM From Second Life Website to Friends Inworld

It would be very nice to be able to instant message friends in world from the Second Life website. When you are on the Second Life website but for whatever reason cannot get in world and you see someone is online that you want to communicate with, there should be an option to possibly right-click their name and select IM that person In world. They would get your message immediately and be able to send you one back.
Anyone else think that this is a cool feature that should be added??

great idea

I would use this feature.

I would defenetly use this. Would come in handy.

The ability to IM from the SL website to individual Friends would be extremely valuable. There simply are numerous times when I can't enter SL, but I do keep an eye on the website all the time for when Friends are logged in.

I agree it would be useful. It's something that could be done by a 3rd party, so I'm considering doing this myself. I'd put it up as a free service, though if it gets popular I might post some ads (no obnoxious popups or anything, though).

I'm not sure how I'd do authentication yet, so initially the service wouldn't guarantee that the sender is who they say they are.

The 3rd party solution would have disadvantages, though. First, it's best here on the SL forum simply for visibility, and also for user authentication. Second, the IMs would come from an object of mine, rather than the sender (the sender would be identified as a prefix to the text).

So, I support the feature suggestion, but meanwhile I might implement a workaround. I'll let you know if I do. I'm not expert in this area, but I think it would be relatively easy to code and insignificant server bandwidth.

Good idea, thanks for posting!

APEZ Vendors and auto lease systems are controlled from www.apez.biz
they also have a free version
anyway one of the recent enhancements is to Im an avi in world, pay them and a few other cool things

check it out at www.apez.biz

This is a great idea and one that I have had since becoming an SL member. I would definitely use this feature. Thanks!!!!!!!

The APEZ solution looks like a good one. It requires the user to sign up in-world first, which is good because it can then authenticate the user by in-world ID. Thanks for posting about it!

I may put up a similar tool for use when you need to IM but can't authenticate in-world first. It won't be as good overall, but will be useful for when folks need it but didn't register in-world first.

On mine, the IM's will probably arrive saying "IM allegedly from xxxx" so folks will know that the source may NOT be who it seems to be. Or something like that.

Cheers
Jeff

I am on dialin over Christmas and I dearly missed this feature. I would prefer a LL solution because I consider private messages private and a 3rd party solution just is nothing I would trust an IM...

I would DEFINATLY use this feature!

It is Soooo cool to see a lot of people would support this idea. Maybe if we are lucky the Lindens will see the support and will implement this feature really soon. I have posted it as a suggestion in the feature proposals section of the Second life Website so please vote on it. The more votes we get. the likelier it will be to see it to fruition. Thanks so much for the thumbs up!

OMG please do. I have the crappiest computer to play SL on since i use wireless and this comp is 2 years old, so when i constantly crash and leave people waiting for half hours to hours on end, i feel like a complete fool. A website IM would save me so much more time, plus people could be better connected then I only wish that SL would stop updating so that the grids can stabilize in time to actually try and put this into effect.

Duchess, go to an Apez terminal ingame (go to the link above to find one) and sign up. Free, works great. I use it all the time.

Just note that your IMs don't go into the IM window the way they would if you IM somebody from ingame. They say "IM" in front, but otherwise just show up like regular chat. This is how SL handles IM from objects, it's not specific to the Apez implementation. No way to get around it, really.

And right now I'm too busy with other things (not the least of which is RL) to set up one that doesn't require verifying ingame first (as I mentioned above), so folks don't hold your breath.

BTW, I heard that libsecondlife provides a chat-only client that allows chat and IM. I'm looking into it. I'll post back whatever I find out. So far all I've found out is that you need a clue or 3 to figure it out at their site. (And I'm a software developer; I shudder to think of a typical user trying to figure it out!)

Like so many others, I am not able to log onto SL during the day due to the fact that I'm at work and having the actual SL program in full would take up too much memory and since I need to access several things at once, it would prevent me from doing my job in full.

It would be great for a single messenger apart from the SL Client that would work the same as other messaging systems such as Yahoo!, MSN, AIM, MySpace, Gaim, Trillian, IRC, so on and so forth. This would allow those of us who are unable to run the Client, still be able to speak with friends, family, or acquaintances who are on SL during the day.

I believe that this would also help out business owners who must run a business on SL, yet need to still contact employees through out the day. The Non SIM IM would benefit several people and it would also allow those who have a more limited connection (dial up) to converse without the hassle of rezzing for 30min straight

Please can we have it now!

why not just use email??

You CAN recieve IM's through email, however, you can not respond to them. Thats the problem.

That's not true. I've had plenty of email-to-IM conversations.

Yes you can, it's as simple as hitting reply.
A good rule of thumb is to delete any text that the original sender may have sent in the body of the message. The same character limits apply when replying via email.

I've used this many times.

Because you can't send email to someone in-world unless they IM you first.

Unless you know their UUID. Then it's as easy as [UUID]@im.secondlife.com

Is it though? I'm sure I tried that recently and it didn't work (any more?).

I haven't had an offline IM in a while, so I haven't checked recently. Will do soon.

I thought of that one some time back, but it didn't work for me. You could make a relay object and IM *that*, but it wouldn't work if they weren't in-world.