Despite the “silence” reported on earlier, Linden Lab actually slipped out a new “feature” last week. Open a new tab in your web browser and type:
https://my.secondlife.com/First.Last
…and replace “First.Last” with your own name (including the period) – and voilà: your SL Profile (in part) is right there on the web – searchable and shareable with the likes of Twitter and Facebook.
What’s more is – if you log into the web profile, you’ll be able to edit it – and the edits will appear in your in-world profile. You can also change your Display Name from the web and see it reflected back in-world. When viewing other people’s profile, you’ll also see a button called ACTIONS, which lists options to IM them, pay them, etc., – but sadly, all these actions currently require you to launch the Viewer; you cannot say, simply pay someone directly from their web profile without going in-world.
Additionally, things like URLs included in your profile and any Groups you have openly displayed in your profile become clickable.
All of this makes this new feature rather clever, even though – like just about everything released of late by LL – it is apparently still “beta”.
Overall, I like it, despite some people crying out (already) that it is an open door to “data mining”; certainly, the arrival of such a capability explains (at least a little) as to why Avatars United went nowhere.
Going to be interesting to see how this one develops.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 