Bye Bye AvaLine

Ok I been busy, sorry, but time to rant a little, my google reader gave me a post by Taka Linden, on the official blog, that that look to have pulled back, so I keep is all here, the knowledge base articles are still published thou.

Bye bye beta! AvaLine: Dial an Avatar is now available to all avatars
from Second Life Blogs : Blog List - All Communities by taka@lindenlab.com
Hi. I'm Taka Linden, the new product+business manager of communication services in Second Life. Before joining Linden Lab just over two months ago, in various capacities I've managed the development and marketing of mobile phones, voice-driven web services, and performance analysis tools for supercomputers. I'm thrilled to be part of the Second Life community, and look forward to developing lots of neat and useful stuff.

Half of the fun of this job is planning new bells and whistles -- and the other half is bringing them to life. So today, I am pleased to announce that AvaLine: Dial an Avatar has completed its beta program and is now online and ready for subscribers.

With an AvaLine, a Resident can receive calls from anywhere in the world, while inworld. AvaLine beta users, for example, found a number of inventive ways to incorporate real-world phone calls into their inworld experiences:

* keeping in touch with friends and loved ones
* taking calls while staying immersed in the inworld experience (e.g., no independent apps to manage, handsets to juggle, etc.)
* providing business associates an easy and cost-effective way to communicate
* giving social contacts a discrete way to connect
* reducing or avoiding long-distance telephony charges

How to use an AvaLine
To talk with a Resident, a caller simply dials a nearby local access number (available in more than 40 international cities), and enters the Resident's personal connection code. If the Resident is online and accepts the call, the two parties can begin talking immediately, just as on a regular phone call or inworld voice chat. If the Resident is not inworld or declines the call, the caller may leave a voicemail message that the Resident will receive as an email attachment. The caller pays only what's required to connect to the local number, and the Resident pays only the flat-rate AvaLine subscription fee, regardless of the geographic distance between the parties, the number of calls received, or the number of minutes used.

How to get an AvaLine
Go to secondlife.com/avaline and log in. Click the 'Manage Your AvaLine' button, and select the service and billing frequency you desire. The system will generate a personal connection code for you, and you can begin accepting calls immediately. To aid busy communicators who engage with multiple groups who don't mix, you can subscribe to as many AvaLine connection codes as you require. Each connection code costs L$ 1500 if billed monthly, or L$ 1200 if billed annually (as a once-a-year payment of L$ 14,400).

How to get voicemail
As part of the AvaLine launch we're offering free voicemail for the rest of 2009! Voicemail setup is quick and easy -- just go to secondlife.com/avaline, click the 'Manage Your Voicemail' button, type in your email address and make sure the 'enable' box is checked, and click 'Apply'.

How to keep an AvaLine code from the beta program
Log in to the Second Life Support Portal, open an 'AvaLine Beta Migration Ticket', and fill in all the fields that begin with "AvaLine." On 1 September 2009 we will keep your connection code in place as we convert your account to a standard subscription with billing recurring in the frequency you select.
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Introductory offer
To kick off the full launch of AvaLine: Dial an Avatar, until 31 August 2009 we're offering the following promotions:

* first month free
* free voicemail for the rest of 2009
* exclusive ***hula-dancing*** Linden bear for the first 500 subscribers

Your voice
As Joe mentioned when he kicked off the beta program in May, AvaLine: Dial an Avatar is the first of many new services we'll be rolling out in the next several months, and we would very much like your feedback and suggestions:

* How do you use AvaLine: Dial an Avatar?
* What else do you wish you could do with your AvaLine?
* What is your biggest communications challenge in or related to Second Life?
* What is your favorite way to communicate? (e.g., voice on phone, SMS, voice on computer, IM, email, etc.)

Please add your comments to this thread -- I look forward to hearing from you!


Taka Linden

Lets look at the questions:

* How do you use AvaLine: Dial an Avatar?
Probalt not at all, well my avatar is not RL, I will not give out privacy information to anyone, I don't use voice.

* What else do you wish you could do with your AvaLine?
Not sure i can see any real used for the old phone system, who outside SL do i really like to talk to? Well as my avatar I mean.

* What is your biggest communications challenge in or related to Second Life?
Getting group chat to work, look att the Emerald Gang they even added IRC in world to work around your not working group chat, groups been borked for years, we need more than 25, we need working chat, we need working massages. We need not to get delivery crapped when away a day or two.

* What is your favorite way to communicate?
IM, text chat, it's quick and also time independent, Don't interupt my RL, people in my RL don't get disturbed, I can look away two minutes and not miss it, I get a log of what was said. Texting text messages rawk......

Disconnecting Second Life to Real Life

Why? Why? Why should I like to connect my second life to my real life? I some like to make real life connections using second life, but me and I guess most of my friend are good with the rules:

• SL is SL
• RL is RL
• RL comes first.

But from that I'll not say no to an other SL client, small light weight. Ajax life for me just don't make it, I get to much logged out, it times out. I would like to have something text based. Running at an other place, that can get passed a firewall. I can used SSH out. I want send IM's and read notecards. Voice, why, I'm in a landscape at work, in skype i only use the part text chat, why I DON'T what my colleges to hear. That gets even more true with my SL friends. For me? I don't think SLim will solve anything, I often reply on IM's using gmail, looks like that still will beat SLim. Getting all my SL friend in the gmail-talk list. That feature I really love.

Thansk Linden Lab....

One think i missed in the previous post, thanks for all the bug fixes, the number of bug fixes in one release have not been this high for very long. That's is something I like, now please 1.18.3 Monday with friends and groups detachable from the IM window, That's all I ask for! Please help out with closing VWR-1076, in a way that works with out voice!

Ohh fuck.... (Updated...)

I HATE YOU LINDENS! Not because you added voice, because this voice shit HAVE DESTROYED THE TEXT CHAT INTERFACE! The Friends List. All in IN FUCKING SMALL WINDOW. I need then as like it was before to see anything, NOW I CAN FOLLOW IM AND MAIN CHAT ANY MORE PLEASE FIX NOW!!!!!!!

Ok. that was possibly to configure, but the group and friend list wont come out of that window and that's even more irritating!

I have at "best" only 35 friend online... Seeing four at a time in the list won't work!
I need that window to be almost as high as the screen. I most of the time have 10 -20 im's running, I need to be able to used the full screen width of the tabs with IM's the new client only lets me combine this if i cover the full screen with chat and IM. Really nice? NOT!!!!



This is my window layout, I like it, give me back the friends list! NOW! Please! Give me back the group swap window, now please, That two might be combined. The New Chat stuff in the IM I never liked, now that's the only one left. :-(

More updates, Raul Crimson, made a really nice observation earlier. Balp, have written a open letter. Any other reactions I have missed, comment here or send me mail.

I'm Nadine.Nozaki and thats at gmail.com.

Dreading what to come, or voice!

One can wonder if any of the Lindens actually brothered to talk to any of us resident before posting there long defence of the voice feature. First Roleplaying is very little about the time you spend in combat, if you like combat, SL is not the place. There are many good first person shoot out games with voice for that type of action. And the talk about voice changing software sound cool but what year will we have that?

And for us non English speakers, PLEASE GET A GRIP OF REALITY! My English writing is ok, can communicate that way. I often have to go back and read what people say two times, sometimes three to understand it. When talking to my English colleges I'm much more limited in what I can say, this is common for many of my fellow swedes, Talking on phone is much harder, need more questions to make sure we understood what was said. And when you then add background sounds, bad mic and all of that other stuff. It's getting hard just to understand, about half of the DJ's in SL I have problem understanding when they talk at a club. An then they are the only once talking to talking in the mouth of each other. Yes as non-English speaker I will never turn voice on. I only have two friends that understand my native language in SL. For the rest text is much much easier, and when voice comes I probably will see how was real friends. I'm scared my bad English will loose man many good friends that day.