Is Email-To-IM Possible?

Is it possible to send an email to people on the grid when I am off the grid? I know that it works the other way around (when I'm offline I get IMs as emails), so there must be a way to reverse that, right?

yes, but you have to reply to an instant message-forwarded-by-email within a certain time limit. I don't know what that time limit is, though. It's certainly less than 24 hours.

Google SLEEK

I've got sleek installed and use it occasionally but have a stupid question..... if you're logged on with sleek then your avatar is in world right? So to people in SL you're just standing there looking afk? Potentially thinking you're being rude by ignoring them?

I guess there's ways around it like putting yourself up at 1000m or something......

Just reply to the IM/email as you would any other email. It will be sent into SL and delivered to that person. You can carry on conversations all day long using that system.

Just make sure you do one thing. When you replay to the IM using your email, make sure you delete the previous message thats in your response or that will get sent back into SL and show up as garbage on the persons screen.
Deleting it will send your message and have it look as though you are in SL.

What with the message: "user not online ; this message is stored" when the user replies again ?
He thinks: he was online and now he's offline again !!

People get very confused when you reply to IMs by email. Be prepared to do a whole lot of explaining before they understand you cannot TP them, cannot add them to your group, cannot come to help them with something.

Most of my friends know my work schedule and know that I'm at work. To new friends, I usually just say I'm offline and responding through my email. Sometimes I have to explain it because a lot of people are not aware of this feature, but once they get used to it, it's great.

I haven't answered this Ee since not actually using Sleek myself I don't have a clue. I was rather keen on seeing an answer to this following a recent Sleek thread that almost raised the issue.

The time limit is currently 3 days (with a reference to increasing it to 5 days at some point in the future)

Just tried it out with an alt... and yes.... when using Sleek your avatar is just standing there looking dumb.

They should make an IM client for second life that looks like AIM or MSN Messneger.

I use Max Case's EMAIL2IM. You need to know the user keys of people you wish to send IMs to, but those are easy to obtain, and the kit even includes a key-getter object to help out.

Hmm. I can't find Max's anymore, but SL Exchange has a similar product by someone else:
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=259543

EDIT: Found Max's:
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=24392

how do you get people's keys?

One way would be to script an object that will get them for you. Have a touch event handler that gets the avatar key of whoever touches it, and then speaks the key to you. Get your friends to touch it.

hi emily

check out: zonkster.com

it's a site I just launched (in beta).... it lets you send IMs to any resident in-world from any PC and is aimed at anyone who can't start the SL client or doesn't want to log on just to send off a message.

I have such a script. I have it placed in an object in my house. Anyone interested in the script, please let me know.

Morwen.

Real World Interface Device.
I swear by it

http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=152239

Even easier than some people here a making it sound.

First, you need the person you want to email your IM to to have IM'd you while you're offline. You'll see that the IM in your email inbox is from something like [email]835782856728652njf7836428746@lindenlab.com[/email] or some such. That number is the avatars key. You can simply send an email to that address and they will get it as an IM.

It used to be that you could email someone simply by sending to their key, as Conan mentions above. However, you can't get their key from them IMing you when you're offline, like you used to. The numbers now are "session IDs", which eventually time out.

I don't know whether you can still use an avatar key to send email ingame, but hopefully you can.

At the time I was doing this, I found that incoming email was delayed by about an hour, so don't expect fast response. Hopefully the changes they made to optimize email "sessions" will spill over to this kind of "non-session" email, where you just use the person's key.

BTW, you can also email to an object, using the object's key. I have a very simple mailbox that people can leave messages in, and you can send email to it so multiple people can read it. (I don't sell it, but if anyone wants a copy just let me know. It's not for public use because it doesn't have any anti-abuse features: a griefer could fill it with messages for example.)

The email trick works a treat.

You guys are making things harder than you need to, for one, you can get anyone's key by going to http://w-hat.com. No need for key givers or bugging your friends to touch one. Secondly, I wrote an RL to SL emailer, you touch it, then type your message and it emails to whatever email address is in the script, then, simple respond to the email, and the script recieves the email and IM's the response back to the avatar. It's not fully done, but the email works fine. Also, I have a sales notification script that emails sales data to my phone.. when I make a sale, I get a message on my phone saying who bought what, how much they spent, and where the transaction occured.

Look up llEmail() and llGetNextEmail in the wiki for further info on the subject.

It's possible. Also, I've never had a time limit to when I had to respond from my inbox.

Say I am at work, and someone IM's me while I am offline. I'll get the emailed message sent to my inbox, and seven hours later I click reply, type my response in, and click send. They get it as normal.

There is a time limit of 3 days. You can't respond to an IM that is older than 3 days.