Technology in Mind

I’ve been experimenting with the Second Life 2 Beta Viewer and I like it a lot. The greatest   thing about the viewer in my opinion is the newly implemented Shared Media. This began of course last year with the introduction of ‘web on a prim’. But this was limited to one per parcel, via the parcel media controls. It did permit web pages to be shown on a prim, but it was really limited.  There were developers such as Damani that really pushed the technology to it’s limit and tried to make it simpler in bringing up various web pages and  selecting various videos to display.

With the new SL Viewer 2.0 beta that has all changed.  Any object face can have a media texture. It’s not limited to parcels, and any prim can have a different shared media texture.  Individual avatars can carry their own shared media object, without even renting or owning land.

Currently I have the Damani MediaPRO Viewer in my virtual office which allows me to display YouTube videos and provides limited website viewing functionality. But with the introduction of the shared media in the new viewer, I believe that this viewer will soon be obsolete. That’s not to mention, a lot of my office inventory that runs on note card systems and RSS hovering text will soon be rendered obsolete as well.

I’ve also been experimenting with creating shared media objects that will permit someone to send me an IM from in-world to my Yahoo Messenger or other IM client using simple URL’s that point to flash sites.  However, it seems that the zoom in on these objects is limited and that causes the fonts for these applications to be to small in the display.  The idea is to permit someone who visits my virtual office to be able to IM me using the display. If I’m not online, then Yahoo would redirect the IM to my mobile phone and we could still connect to have a conversation.