NMC Campus Observer

Finding Your Avatar Profile on the Web

CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine) : Aug 21, 2008 11:15am

I was intrigued in writing the previous story on the Wall V-2 performance as Debbie Trilling had provided as a resource this link which displays her SL profile in a web browser:
http://world.secondlife.com/resident/4e07f6d1-4598-4351-84fa-826ccb723ea8

Where does that link come from? I pondered. Obviously, the last part is some sort of asset ID, like each avatar has the equivalent of a texture’s database ID. I poked around URLs at world.secondlife.com many of which return XML data, and my hunch is the search engine that you use in world is XML based.

So I went in to Second Life, poked around my profile, all of the bizarre advanced settings looking for this magical string that might identify CDB Barkley via URL.

I found it! If you use the general search tool in the Second Life client for your avatar, you get a list of results:

Clicking the second link, yields a screen that looks pretty much like the web link for Debbie’s profile:

But how do you get its URL? I went back to the search results, and could find no right/ctrl combination that a web browser yields to copy the URL for a link. Then I went back to me in world profile display, and way at the bottom is “Link to this page: http://world.secondlife.com/resident/fef1d79b-4162-476d-b8e2-45ab8662d3e8″

That’s it!

But what a minute. No amount of mouse selection, keyboard commands allows me to copy that long URL! WTF??

The only way I could get the URL for my profile was to write it down on a piece of paper! That is not even Web 1.0, that is Web -1.0!

But anyhow, I found my profile and hand hacked the URL:
http://world.secondlife.com/resident/fef1d79b-4162-476d-b8e2-45ab8662d3e8

Does the SL client need help or what? Gawd, it should not be that hard.

Story filed under: Campus Headlines

See all stories by CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine)

13 Comments Add your own

1. Eloise | August 21st, 2008 at 12:04 pm

It is easy, it’s http://world.secondlife.com/resident/ plus your key.
2. Fleep Tuque | August 21st, 2008 at 12:58 pm

Hi CDB – turns out you just need to get your avatar UUID in world – Buddy Sprocket made a “key grabber” tool to get this data. Then just append your avatar UUID to the end of that standard link and viola, your online profile.

http://world.secondlife.com/resident/(YOUR UUID HERE)

I’m sending a copy of the keygrabber to you in world! =)
3. Fleep Tuque | August 21st, 2008 at 1:00 pm

I should note, you can also query the w-hat database online to get your UUID, at:

http://w-hat.com/name2key
4. CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine) | August 21st, 2008 at 1:14 pm

@Eloise: Yes, but how does an obvious n00b like me know my key? Could not find it in SL interface, nor logged into SL site.

@Fleep: Thanks those help indeed, but its pretty opaque for someone not in the know
5. Fleep Tuque | August 21st, 2008 at 1:53 pm

Definitely agree, one of those things that is totally confusing and not new-user friendly at all. Even more annoying is that this appears to be the ONLY way to get your profile on the web, doesn’t even come up if you search the site or anything. I don’t get it at all.
6. Paul Decelles | August 21st, 2008 at 2:51 pm

Alan,

I posted a clunky way to do this on SLED but after that I decided to poke around with your method and I don’t understand why you couldn’t grab off the whole url. I tried it in Firefox on my Mac and it works great.

I posted about this just now at:

http://theforcethat.blogspot.com/2008/08/warning-second-life-geek-attack.html

I don’t know why SL doesn’t use a single profile. My forum profile is not linked to the SL profile and that just strikes me as weird.

Thanks for you post about this here and on SLED. I learned something new today so I guess I can go home and play Second Life.

Paul (Simone Gateaux)
7. CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine) | August 21st, 2008 at 3:05 pm

@Paul Decelles: Thanks Paul, not sure why my Mac was being squirrely today, good to know you can copy and paste and not use pencils!
8. Paul Decelles (Simone Gateaux) | August 21st, 2008 at 4:36 pm

Alan,

Could be a browser issue. I am in the Mac world at work and I have had problems with browsers not picking up long urls. I use Firefox generally on the Mac NOT Safari. Right now I am home on my Vista machine and Firefox works fine here as well on getting the SL links.
9. Nick Noakes | August 21st, 2008 at 4:41 pm

Yet another (simpler?) way:

[caveat: this of course is only for the main grid and I'm assuming only if show in search is checked in the avatar's profile]

Go to:

http://search.secondlife.com/search.php

select SL People in the drop down, type in the avatar name, hit Go

1st hit usually gives you the link which will open up the SL client

secondlife:///app/agent/avatar UUID #/about

2nd hit usually gives you the direct link to view the profile online (the same one you see for the Search browser in the client when using the All tab)

http://world.secondlife.com/resident/avatar UUID #
10. Debbie Trilling | August 21st, 2008 at 4:58 pm

You can get the actual open source code that shows how to do this using LSL from my LLab wiki page at:

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:debbie_Trilling

then follow the link for ‘Random AV profile Projector’…

full help, plus an explanation is given on the online ‘Help’ page
11. Nick Noakes | August 21st, 2008 at 5:27 pm

Debbie has some other great free scripts on her SL wiki page too! (thanks Debbie from Corwin )
12. life | August 25th, 2008 at 5:34 am

u can use the search facility also with the toolbar 4 sl:
http://www.sl-toolbar.eu/sl/english/english.html
13. AshleyMarie Eberhardt | February 3rd, 2009 at 7:47 pm

Just FYI – after you highlight the URL in the search window, you can click-drag and drop the highlighted text onto your web browser in OS X. Not sure about Windows though.

Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

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