2007_05_01_archive

You've got a message... from the Second Life

Nicholas Chase has published an interesting article on IBM

Developerworks. It's about making it possible to chat with people in

Second Life (SL), without opening SL program. That's a rather

innovative solution and I think that many SL users would appreciate

such possibility.

It works like this:

1) SL person clicks an object (a picture, a cube) which says "Type

message now and it will be send to John Doe"

2)SL person types the message, like "Hi John, can you hear me?", while

being near the object.

3)The object can "see" the typed text and sends it to a web servlet

using HTTP call. Web server has a connection to Sametime server

through Sametime bot.

4) Sametime bot forwards the message to John Doe, who is logged in on

Sametime network.

5) John Doe has his Sametime client started and receives a message

from Sametime Bot, saying "Hi John, can you hear me?".

6) John Doe types "Yes, how can I help you?" as the response to bot in

the Sametime client chat window.

7) Bot outputs the answer to the servlet and the servlet outputs it

back to the requesting SL object.

8) The object shows message "Yes, how can I help you?" in SL. Anyone

near the object can see the message. So you actually do not chat with

the person, but with the object itself, which "broadcasts" your

message to all people nearby. I think your response message can in

theory also be a private message send only to that person, but the

person's request message is always visible to others.

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/edu/ls-dw-ls-stsl.html

I will try to implement the suggested solution and see if it can be

used for something more useful than spam-chatting with people near

chatboxes :)

Like having a "chat conference meeting" where people do not need to be

logged in to SL, and actually do not even need an SL account. Can be

interesting solution for chat-only SL meetings hold by companies like

IBM. It should be possible to sort away chats from people other than

the meeting's chairman. Just imagine an online conference where

instead of people's avatars you see a lot of chatting cubes :)

I will also try to connect the solution to my company's Sametime

Botand use STWidget as a chat client. Having AJAX/Flash-based STWidget

web client as chat interface would eliminate the need to download and

install Sametime client.

There are thousands of virtual shops in SL selling virual clothes,

virtual furniture and stuff, and some shop owners would probably like

to have an option to chat with customers even when they are not logged

in to SL. Not sure if there is already some software for this #.

Following things are to consider when developing SL-to-Sametime chat

solution for more than 1 user:

* Noone in SL knows what Sametime is and don't care much either. A

Sametime-less option would be great (Apache+MySQL+PHP).

* Sametime bot must be hosted somewhere.

* Same Sametime bot should be able to handle tens of thousands of

objects and hundreds of simultaneous chats. I guess our Sametime bot

can be extended for this purpose, but it's still a difficult task.

Probably several bots at several locations would be needed.

* People do not have Sametime client and don't want one. Can be solved

with STWidget though.

* People do not have access to Sametime servers. Can be temporary

solved by using IBM's demo server.

* The biggest question: will Sametime add too much overhead to the

solution, without actually making it easier to develop and maintain?

Theoretically a message can be sent directly to STWidget chat client