Yes, the rumors are true! This picture was taken from my MacBook Pro, showing me exploring the awesome Here island on an AT&T Tilt cellphone. This Second Life mobile viewer (aka client), a collaboration between virtual world leader Linden Lab and streaming game pioneer Vollee, has been out in beta for several months since the original announcement, and I’ve just gotten my hands on it. Check out supported handsets and you may be able to try it too!

One of the biggest practical benefits of a “light client” is simply that it allows you to log in and enjoy Second Life on the go. By smoothing the process of being able to connect with others, communication and fun is facilitated. And consider the historical asymmetry of how easy it is to do IM-to-email, but the other way around isn’t as elegant. By creating more bidirectional paths to ease saying “Hi!”, we become more useful in a Metcalfian way.

You should’ve heard my excited reactions when I was outside — yes, one can be outdoors and inworld at the same time — and logging in from my porch. My wife was the only witness, but we both remarked at how neat it is.

Alas, I’m in an area with poor network coverage so I’ve been experiencing freezes and disconnects — I’ll need to do more testing in metropolitan regions, but despite those instabilities, one of the amazing things about this streaming technology is that despite some visible graphical artifacts (due to data compression), Second Life-Vollee actually shows WindLight clouds and even water reflections! (Which makes me wonder, on a tangent, if there’d be some way to make lower-end desktop machines enjoy Second Life with better graphics than they’re actually capable of; it’d likely have some noticeable latency like VNCing, but… a thought.)

Even on the QVGA 320×240 screen the Tilt has, the visuals of this Java app look colorful and watching stuff rez in brings a warm, familiar feeling; a lot of the UI is styled similarly. No, you can’t sort your inventory, but the main emphasis (for now) is exploration & socialization, so there’s an easy menu where you can do local chat or send IMs, as well as teleport directly to a region by entering its name. Popular Places and Events are also in there, but you know I don’t have much use for either of those — the former has high-trafficked but mostly uneclectic locations, and the latter is spam-laden and kludgy.

I gravitate to tools I can use everyday, and as such, I’m going to keep using the Second Life-Vollee beta, join the forums, and learn more about the AT&T Tilt. This is the first time in many years I’ve had a cellphone, and while I don’t intend to make “normal calls” a lot, I really appreciate having my Second Life when I’m out and about.

Also see:

• More info-links on the Second Life wiki
• Pictures on Flickr from various Resis
• LadyDeath Lafleur has some crisp screenshots

Thanx muchly to Julian Corbett and Frank Fay for getting me connected!