NMC Campus Observer

Sparkle- iPhone App for SL and OpenSim Communications

CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine) : Apr 16, 2009 02:16pm

Among the pie in the sky virtual world dreams is the ability to access Second Life on a mobile device. I don’t count that apps that stream SL from a nearby PC to your phone. I don’t count Vollee which had a nice video, a beta program, and now a domain and web site that are gone.

Then there was AjaxLife that allowed you to IM, teleport, see your friends from a mobile device (I tested it 8 months ago on an iPod Touch). I’d not looked in a while, the service comes and goes, and Katherine has struggled to keep it alive.

So now comes along Sparkle in the game, an iPod Touch/iPhone app for communication in world via your mobile. The interesting angle on Sparkle is you can also connect to the SL beta grid as well as OpenSim. Plus, you can create different account connections for multiple avatars.

So in giving it a test ride, I did the typical approach; I logged in as myself to SL on my computer as CDB Barkley, and used Sparkle on my iPhone to log in as my alt, Zoraster Gaffer. When you log into SL, you have access to your contacts ist, so you can see who is online and IM with them:

CDB had trouble offering Zoraster a TP, but Mr Z was able to offer CDB a teleport from the iPhone. In world, my iPhone connected avatar apears as the Mythical Cloud (the avatar formerly known as “Ruth”?):

So in the same space, we could banter by chat:

It is not, nor does it claim to be SL on an iPhone. But I can see a number of ways this is useful:

• If you are traveling or just away from the computer, you can reach out and communicate with your in world contacts.
• If you are attending an in world even where the communication is chat, you could fully participate from a mobile.
• There might be some interesting ways to use this in some mixed world events (have an SL group communication with say people doing interviews in the streets, or collecting data in the field).
• If you are logged in to SL on your computer and need to send respond to someone communicating with an alt, you could use Sparkle to do this w/o having to log out of your main account.

I am a bit lost on the name “Sparkle” and the cute star iconography, but hey, that’s just window dressing.

Hmmm, it might be fun to have an in-world gathering where all the attendees are there via Sparkle. The group photo would be funny (a bunch of clouds).

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