More interfaces

Gosh - over a month since my last blog entry..... I really must do something about my (lack of) blogging.

To explain; since the start of April I've been working 3-4 days a week away from home, so have not had the opportunity to go into SL and "play". (for some strange reason my wife does not see exploring SL as a priority activity..... in fact she does not see ANY use of the computer as a priority activity... so when I do get home I don't have time to spend in SL). But enough of my home life.

Whilst working away, depending on the hotel's internet facilities, I am sometimes able to do some web surfing using my laptop. Unfortunately it is not beefy enough in the graphics department to run a full SL client, but it HAS been able to run character interfaces like SLeek (see earlier posts). Unfortunately, SLeek has a nasty habit of breaking every time that the Lindens update the SL protocols. (I understand that the next release of SLeek is likely to be a lot more resilient to interface changes.... we will have to wait and see..... currently it is broken!) However, there is an alternative....

An enterprising young lady (well, I say young lady... it could be an old man for all I know) called katharine berry has developed a web interface to SL. Always liking new toys, I had a play with it earlier this evening.

I'm pleased to report that the interface works! It took me a while to come to this conclusion, as no-one I knew was logged onto SL this evening!! However, once some of my friends came on line, I was able to send them IM's & the system seems to work.

The interface allows you to Chat, IM, view the map and teleport (though to teleport, you really need to know the coordinates of your destination to do the job properly). My only complaint (compared with SLeek) is that the interface does not let you send an IM to someone who is not on-line.

There have been questions raised about the security of entering SL username and password into a third-party web site, but I guess this is one occasion where you just have to trust the site designer (Katherine claims to encrypt username and password, and promises not to store them).

So if, like me, you need to access SL from a machine that does not support the necessary graphics, you might like to give ajaxlife a whirl!