Linden Lab Builds Bridge Between Second Life and Real World

Linden Lab Builds Bridge Between Second Life and Real World With New Voice-Driven Instant Messaging Client: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance: "SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Linden Lab®, creator of 3D virtual world Second Life® (www.secondlife.com), has announced a new voice and instant messaging client that will enable Second Life Residents to connect and communicate with their Second Life contacts whether or not they are actually inworld. The thin client, called SLim™, provided by Vivox (www.vivox.com) in partnership with Linden Lab, enables Residents to conduct voice or text conversations with members of their Second Life Friends list in and out of the virtual world."

So after at least two dedicated third party Second Life IM clients were released and used, Linden Labs has decided to get in on the act.

Nice. Let's see, last year I used to use a program I bought in Second Life called SLimChat (notice the similar name?) It was a GREAT program, much like the early ICQ client and had basic in world functionality as well.

SLimChat worked by using the libsecondlife library and logging you into the Second Life world. You could do most anything you could do while logged in with the official client, but in text only. I.E., you could "hear" and type to people in chat range, send and receive IMs, pay and receive money, interact in a limited basis with objects around you (like sitting on a chair), receive group notices and more.

SLimChat was ideal for those of us who needed or wanted to stay in touch with Second Life while at work.

Sadly, the creator of the program died before it could ever make it out of beta and no new non-expiring versions were released.

So along came SLeek by Delta Czukor. Same general idea with a little more involved interface. Lacks the group notices I think though. Great program for the same uses as the ill-fated SLimChat.

SLeek requires the Microsoft .NET library so run only under Microsoft Windows. Delta plans a complete rewrite in .NET 3.5 and will release it as open source once the renamed and rewritten project reaches a stable state. Sadly, the use of .NET 3.5 means that SLeek will only be available for Windows, not for OS X or Linux.

Perhaps the new official IM client from Linden Labs will be available for Mac and Linux giving us at least the barest minimum of SLeek's functionality.

Given the choice though, if I'm going to have to run yet ANOTHER IM client, I'd prefer to have the features of SLimChat and SLeek.

You can find SLeek at http://delta.slinked.net.

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