I’ve just spent a few minutes listening to lots of “Can you hear me, now?” at NMC Campus in SecondLife at the beginning of a stress test for SL integrated voice application. It’s supposed to be released in June.
And, this was pretty exciting and very… clear. It sounded like a Skype conference call or a Skypecast, but sure looked different ;-)
I couldn’t stay until the end of the test, but this is a very promising start for voice chat in SecondLife, which I identified as a very important step for the future of the platform in higher ed marketing and admission fields in my first post about SL last summer: “Should your institution hold virtual open houses in SecondLife (SL)?”:
Voice instead of instant messaging – In SL, communications between avatars are only done via the game instant messaging application. I’ve heard and read that voice over internet protocol is in the plans and should happen soon. When slow typers will be on equal grounds with their faster counterparts, exchanges will become easier. That’s what I’m calling online interactivity, the next best thing after face-to-face interactions ;-)
Now, it won’t be long until we can mark this one “checked.”