Reading Radar

Last post I complained about how testing the SLim client would be hard with no one using it yet, then I woke up and created a SLim account for an alt that I use for building/scripting and getting stuff done (hence the blurred name in the picture below) and IM’d my Radar account while logged into SL as Radar, and into SLim client as the alt.

It worked really well for text IM, obviously I wasn’t going to be trying out the voice capabilities though. But for IM it was instant back and forth.

Then I noticed that Dedric Mauriac, while not logged into SL, was logged into SLim. I knew because of the icon next to his name in my friends list.

I IM’d him but got no response, so either he’s sleeping, wishing I was under the wheels of a bus, or SLim really only works to communicate with your alts. Hmmmm…..

Right now the downsides are still the requirement of a special client to use it, which 99.999% of the people won’t download, having to create an account with Vivox, which 99.999% of the people will find annoying, and all the normal considerations of the SL client, namely, I don’t think this will be an option for people who can’t have SL on a particular computer or need to get around firewalls that SL can’t. I think it’s useful if you aren’t logged into SL and don’t want to, but need to communicate with someone real quick, or if they aren’t, but are using SLim. I think it’s a nice to have, and I think for a few people, I may use it quite a bit. It would be nice to only have to deal with an IM window in-world, for example, than to deal with skype and in-world SL IM’s at once.

We shall see…. oh, yeah, the locals are still angry at the Lindens anyway, so they’re all claiming lack of interest in SLim based on that perspective too.

UPDATE:

I tried out the voice with Stuart Warf this morning while we were both out of world, logged into SLim. Once I pointed it to the correct audio devices, all was well and it worked fine. Sound quality was about what you’d expect from the Vivox/SL voice experience - not great. Vivox seems to be synonymous with “noise generator” in my experience, although in recent months it’s always worked well for conversations in SL. It’s nasty to record for podcasts though.

Also, SLim keeps wanting to default to the first account I logged into the IM client with rather than the last one. That’s annoying. Couple other annoyances with it not keeping my preferences saved, which I assume will get fixed over time.

I agree with Jane’s comment on this post, LL needs to make sure that the barrier of entry is low for people to use this. Obviously right now it’s only first look, but LL tend to gravitate towards complexity. Then again, the SL experience in general is pretty smooth compared to the Openlife Grid’s website and information for new users.