Movable Metaverse: Japanese company creates 2nd Web-based Second Life browser

Katharine Berry has competition: a Japanese company called 3Di (background here) recently launched Movable Life, a web-based Second Life interface which joins Ms. Berry 's AjaxLife as a browser-driven alternative to running the official SL client.  Last night I created an alt "Hamlet Auebauch" account and gave it a whirl; you can teleport, chat with nearby Residents and IM your friends, search places/Residents/groups, navigate the map and your inventory, and more.  The system has professional polish and runs fairly well; also, the company claims not to retain your account password and other data, which is instead transmitted directly to the Linden servers (they say.)  Judging by its Terms of Service, 3Di plans to earn revenue through advertising and sponsored promotions.

So which is the better SL-to-Web solution?

At the moment, I'd say the lovably modest hacker girl maintains the innovation lead, for you can pay L$ through AjaxLife, a potentially revolutionary innovation.  Movable Life has no discernible way of doing that.  What's more, Katharine has open sourced her code, while 3Di has not.  Still, they offer a compelling alternative; Internet Explorer-versus-Mozilla, let's say. 

In any case, I've contacted 3Di for more background, and will run any reply in an update here.

Comments

[Komuso Tokugawa]

I think a better question is what is the benefit of a web browser thin client over ones like http://delta.slinked.net/ ?

There is definatly a use case for staying connected to sl via a thin client while working on other things in rl, but email is too slow and the 3d client too cpu hungry.

ATM I think http://delta.slinked.net/ is better than both the web solutions in this regard.

[Opensource Obscure]

@ Kamuso:
I'd say that for average user,
- Sleek installation is hard (also, Mac & Linux users can't apparently use it)
- official SL client installation is easy (but you have to download and install it)
- SL web-based clients do not need installation at all and they are ready for use

It depends on users' need and skills.

I feel that freedom of choice about clients may be going to improve Second Life adoption.

[Peter Stindberg]

SLeek installation is hard? Download, unzip, double-click the sleek.exe - done!