Within the last 24 hours, we've been getting widespread reports of Second Life instant-messages suddenly being delivered weeks after they were originally sent. Initially it seemed to be a single burst of such messages that were unclogged from some creaking subsystem and delivered in a bunch, but it seems not to be the case.

We've experienced this ourselves over the last day now, with messages suddenly popping out of the Second Life grid, as if they were fresh and new. Initially it seemed that it was messages that had gone undelivered in the last five weeks, but we've just seen two that were originally sent, and apparently remained undelivered for over six months.

Continue reading Undead Second Life instant messages, not so instant actually

Undead Second Life instant messages, not so instant actually originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Among all the current Second Life kerfuffle and protests going on about unexpected price-rises and policy changes surrounding certain categories of virtual land, it might have been forgotten that Vivox is preparing to release the SLim lightweight instant messenger system, and Linden Lab is preparing a Second Life viewer that is able to communicate with it.

The release of the former, and the first-look version of the latter appears to be very close now. We got our hands on both (as they appear to be available for download now), and took them for a bit of a spin to see how they might have improved over the demonstration versions that were temporarily available earlier this year.

Continue reading Hands-on with the new SLim release

Hands-on with the new SLim release originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 29 Oct 2008 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab's unannounced SLim lightweight Second Life client is available now. We grabbed it out of the starting gate and took it for a bit of a spin for an hour or so. It looks a great deal like Linden Lab needed some new feature or API in the SLS-1.24 server deployment to support this. As a result, preparation of the SLim software for release prior to an announcement at this year's Virtual Worlds -2008 conference in Los Angeles must have been awfully rushed.

We expected this to be the first purpose-designed client for Second Life to come out of Linden Lab since the original in 2002, but actually ... it isn't. The real story is rather more surprising.

SLim is a Vivox product and it connects to Vivox servers. Connection with Second Life and its grid and servers is only very peripheral. How much involvement Linden Lab actually had with any of this is debatable.

The short version: It does a lot less than you'd hope, and setup of the whole show is far clunkier than you'd like. On with the show...

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Continue reading Hands on: The Second Life SLim client is here

Hands on: The Second Life SLim client is here originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

While Linden Lab's virtual environment, Second Life already has built-in instant-messaging services, and a gateway system that allows instant-messages to be passed out by email and to be replied to -- it's certainly not convenient to exchange messages with Second Life users unless you're already logged in -- and running the viewer requires a whole lot more resources than you might have available on a mobile device or a work or school computer.

Linden Lab has said on numerous occasions that they've been working on this for the last couple of years -- though there seems to have been little progress so far. Now, however, It looks like that's going to change. It appears Linden Lab is actually getting close to either a new client or service to improve instant-messaging.

	Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.

Continue reading Improved instant-messaging coming to Second Life

Improved instant-messaging coming to Second Life originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.