Blogged From Within SL [Now With Screenie]
Posted Wednesday, June 7th, 2006, at 1:34 pm Eastern by Mark Wallace
Well, here we are. As I blogged earlier, you can now point Second Life’s in-world Mozilla browser at virtually any Web page you like. So I’m blogging this from within SL as an experiment. The browser is very kludgy, to be sure. Resize the window or click outside it and things seem to break down. Still, there’s great promise here. Big fun coming.
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Oh that’s so friggin cool. As it gets faster and flexier I look forward to experimenting with just launching SL as my browser.As Justin Hall put it after seeing an inworld PowerPoint presentation: “Second Life eats everything!” Well, right now it’s kind of gumming everything, hehe, but it looks like the chompers are growing in.
aaaahahahahahaha “gumming everything”, outstanding. Now if someone would only come and wipe off the baby food that’s dribbling down its chin, we’d be fine.
It’s worth noting that it’s been possible blog from within SL for a while now.
You take a snapshot and use the email functionality to send to a preset address. This obviously has a host of limitations as compared to actually having a browser right there with you, but can be a solid alternative if you just want to get something quick out.
Yes, Hal, that’s true. In fact, there was a GPL script going around at one point that used a notecard to post text directly to your Blogger blog, which I modded some extra functionality into. It worked, but not all that well. But the point of my post is not that you can blog from within SL, but that you can browse and interact with the Web from within the world. Blogging is only one of many possible applications that this functionality makes possible. And it’s a significant step forward that it no longer takes an email hack to blog from within SL, but that you can do it right in a Web browser like all the other bloggers out there.
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In what way is this “cooler” than just having a Firefox window on top of your SL one? Is there some magic dust that means things are just better because they run from one desktop icon instead of two?
I mean I could make a shortcut that loads SL and Firefox simultaneously…
The point for me is not that you can blog from within SL specifically, but that you can browse and interact with the Web from within the world. All that does is open up new possibilities for people to develop new ways to use that functionality. I haven’t seen anything terribly exciting yet, but I’m sure it’s coming.
It just seems more like a semantic argument.
I don’t see it as within the world, but just within the software. The help browser sits at a level I don’t perceive as “part” of the content of SL.
Having some form of in-world web context and interaction (even if initially it’s more hassle than existing methods) would have a kind of coolness/promise. Like playing Mahjongg in SL is “cool” even if I would be better off playing Kyodai on the second monitor, but the help browser? It’s part of the skin, not the meat.
But OK, sometimes a few scoops of enthusiasm can help to stoke the fires of innovation.
The killer app here will be the ability to use the browser as a “texture” on the wall of your SL house, so that ‘real’ web pages can be shared with your guests.
That way RW companies could but their e-commerce sites inside SL stores and allow residents to purchase RW products (maybe with L$ ?).
That will come soon, Christopher. LL’s sponsored “uBrowser” project (http://uBrowser.com/) shows how you can get a Gecko-based browser inside an OpenGL-generated surface. This has been a long, long project that will finish with having webpages on prims — probably now much closer to being finished.
The reverse, however, is already fully operational — a Linden Scripting Language function that allow you to contact a remote Web browser through an HTTP request, and read the results. So, yes, you can have a virtual shop inside SL, where you would browse for “real life” items, pay an object, and it’ll be delivered to your RL home. That was indeed already possible (using email), but it’s now even easier to implement.
I’m especially looking forward to my RL connection details being harvested and matched to my avatar’s interaction with the object in SL by whoever owns the prim+website. Should be useful for all kinds of demographic marketing purposes. Maybe a store owner will see I’m checking their web content from the UK and quietly change their vendors to put union jack bikinis to the front…
Sorry to be so dense, but how doI use the browser/blogger in SL? Don’t remember seeing any menu options forit.
Thanks
Presto
I have subscribed and Installed Second Life. Experimenting with it now. Haven’t figured out blogging yet. Amazing world of 3 D!