Update April 3rd: As per this LL blog post, the Facebook photo upload has been re-enabled by Facebook.
Update April 2nd: The lab have now officially announced this project viewer – see my blog post here. I’ve also included the filters wiki page link below, now it is publicly accessible
On Tuesday April 1st, Linden Lab introduced the SL Share 2 project viewer, version 3.7.5.288424, which incorporates support for both Flickr and Twitter.
These options are designed to work alongside the existing SL Share to Facebook feature, and provide the means to link your SL account with your Twitter and / or Flickr accounts and then send tweets (and photos) or upload photos.
The new options have their own dedicated toolbar buttons (Flickr and Twitter) and can also be accessed through the Communicate menu.
The two floaters are similar, in that they include a tab for connecting to your Flickr or Twitter accounts, and a tab for uploading messages / snapshots.
The account connection options will open floaters allowing you to log-in to Flickr or Twitter and authorise the linking of your SL account to them. Once linked, the Twitter floater allows you to send Tweets either with or without snapshots attached. Both of the floaters allow you to include your current in-world location as a part of a Tweet / with a snapshot.
Insofar as snapshots are concerned, both capabilities provide the following options:
- A refresh button
- An image size drop-down
- A filter options drop-down (users and developers can design their own filtering scripts if they so wish using the filter documentation in the wiki
- A preview button for checking how shots will look prior to upload.
Additionally, the Flickr floater includes the ability to provide snaps with a title, description, and Flickr tags.
Finally, the SL Share to Facebook floater has also been updated with this viewer:
- The photo floater includes the same filter options, etc., as the Twitter and Flickr options, although there is no longer an option to include a SLurl, as per Facebook’s requirements (see right)
- There is a new Friends tab, which I assume lists all your Facebook friends when you SL account is linked to your Facebook account. I have no idea if any additional functionality is available in the tab, as I don’t use Facebook and so cannot check.
At the time of writing, it is unclear whether or not the Facebook photo upload block has been lifted by Facebook or not. As I reported in my week 13 SL projects updates, LL believe they have updated both the viewer and the back-end intermediate process linking to Facebook in order to comply with Facebook’s requirements. However, any official lifting of the block by Facebook as yet to be confirmed by the Lab.
Currently, the new SL Share 2 features are only available in the project viewer, and will not be available in the release viewer until they progress to a release status.
In the meantime, details on the new project viewer can be obtained from the release notes page, which includes download links to the Windows, Mac and Linux versions (as does the viewer’s entry in the Alternate Viewers wiki page).
Related links
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 
LL have yet to work out that you can not have FB accounts with your SL name? *sigh*
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They’re well aware of that fact.
They’re also aware that there is an appreciably large number of people in SL who have no problem in linking their SL account to the RL Facebook identities and in using the SL Share to Facebook tool.
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It would be nice to allow posting to Pages instead of Accounts. Facebook couldn’t care less if you create a Page for avatar.
Doing that is just a question of using the new Facebook API (like WordPress does). I guess LL are still using the old one, which is much simpler to integrate…
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Yup. FB pages allow pseudonyms, and it would be a nice-to-have, particularly for RP groups, etc., who make use of FB pages in this way.
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Oh, btw, do you know if LL used Katharine Berry’s code for posting to Flickr? She had developed that eons ago, before even she went to MIT. It worked flawlessly.
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I’ve no idea if that code was submitted as a contribution; that’s something that perhaps only Katharine can definitively answer.
This has more options and capabilities (esp. re: the filters & custom filters), so I’d hazard a guess towards it being something more in-house than contributed and re-written. But that is just a guess.
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Nothing to do with me! They did ask for some of my code on several occasions (and, indeed, there is a bunch in there), but they were never interested in having Flickr support. I guess they changed their minds.
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Tuesday is April !.
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Oops. Fixed. Ta.
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Next up, let’s hope the add support for Google+ and Plurk!
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The part about “users and developers being able to design their own filtering scripts” is most interesting to me, but so far I’ve been unable to locate the related wiki documentation you mention. I have some hopes that, if properly coded, it may be of notable help not only for instant snapshots, but even with captures intended for heavy post-processing.
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Yeah… sorry about that.
The wiki page is currently blocked from public access, and I jumped the gun. The Lab will officially blog on the viewer on Wednesday 2nd April, when the wiki page will be revealed to all (including me!).
I caught them on the hop, as I keep an eye on what is flowing through their various viewer channels (or those I can actually see!).
I’ll be adding the link once the block is lifted.
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ty, Inara! ^_^
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You’re welcome!
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I was able to get to the Wiki page yesterday and actually thought I downloaded the viewer. When I started the viewer though it hung my system and I had to reboot to get out of it. Guess that was why.
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You can get to the Alternate Viewer page and sdould be able to d/load the viewer from there. Worked fine for me.
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So finally the lab realized there is life behind Facebook!
As a avid user of the Flickr feature developed by Katharine Berry that both Ukando and Firestorm have since long ago i can only fear that as usual the lab will manage to screw some that really works flawless! (the chui is the most known case of a great idea badly implemented).
On a side note, when will the Lab realize that there are Vga’s that can use more memory and changes the code accordingly! What a waist to got a brand new vga (780gtx ti) and see almost no improvements over my 3 year older 580 gtx!
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“As a avid user of the Flickr feature developed by Katharine Berry that both Ukando and Firestorm have since long ago i can only fear that as usual the lab will manage to screw some that really works flawless!”
Well, you’d be wrong. The new snapshot upload capability to Facebook, Twitter and Flickr is outstanding and very flexible in approach and use.
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From your lips to Linden Labs’ ears…
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Well perhaps now it will be time to put penny camera settings at least as an option!
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