Brilliant Miss Katharine Berry has done it again: the teen Second Lifer who created the groundbreaking web-based Second Life app called AjaxLife has retooled her code so that AjaxLife now runs on the iPhone.
"It shows your friend list and lets you IM people and speak in chat," she explains to me. "If you use Safari most of it will work if you visit http://ajaxlife.net/?iphone. "If you use an iPhone you'll be redirected to the appropriate location automatically. Otherwise you can force it by adding '?iphone'." In the above screenshot, Katharine's chatting with Shiny Stoop, a nearby Resident in Teen Second Life; "Commercial Carlos" is another Resident sending her an IM, which appears as floating text.
This isn't a version of AjaxLife that's been optimized for the iPhone-- rather, an AjaxLife "completely rewritten for it," she says. "And with less functionality. It's more or less where it was when it was created last year." But then, when she introduced AjaxLife in July 2007, the iPhone had not yet become the dominant, transformative mobile phone standard. Now it is, and it's easy to see how an optimized Second Life app running on Apple's phone might transform the virtual world industry, too.
Read more about AjaxLife for iPhone on Katharine's blog.
6:32pm: Bumped for reader response-- post your experiences with AjaxLife for the iPhone in Comments!
This is amazing. For example, my power went out last night and the only thing I could do to tell someone I wouldn't be at a class was to reply to an old e-mail IM notification through my iPhone,. This works about 50% of the time. If I had this app at the time, it wouldn't have been as clumsy. This is so cool. Thanks Katharine!
Posted by: Ketter McAllister | Tuesday, August 05, 2008 at 12:03 PM
This looks like it could be very helpful, especially while travelling. It would let me initiate in-world IMs with customers.
Oh, and it works fine on an iPod Touch too!
Posted by: Cubey Terra | Tuesday, August 05, 2008 at 01:28 PM
"...iPhone had not yet become the dominant, transformative mobile phone standard. Now it is..."
Is the iPhone really this? Perhaps, at some point, it will be but currently it is just a fraction of the cell phone market and a fraction of the 'smart phone' market.
Of course, the attention it gets would have us believe otherwise.
Posted by: Veeyawn Spoonhammer | Tuesday, August 05, 2008 at 03:05 PM
I have been waiting for this. Thanks much Katharine! You just improved my SL efficiency by 42.5% (more or less).
Posted by: Chenin Anabuki | Tuesday, August 05, 2008 at 04:08 PM
"...iPhone had not yet become the dominant, transformative mobile phone standard. Now it is..."
Their web apps don't require you to even own an iPhone or iPod Touch. You can access them with pretty much any device that has a web browser. Unlike the iPod applications, web apps are universally accessible.
Posted by: Cubey Terra | Tuesday, August 05, 2008 at 04:41 PM
True that, I should have specified that as well, because I also mean developers are largely optimizing their web pages for iPhone use (as opposed to other phones.)
Posted by: Hamlet Au | Tuesday, August 05, 2008 at 04:48 PM
Since there seems to be some confusion over this, you *only* have to use '?iphone' if you *aren't* using an iPhone/iPod touch, but for whatever reason want to see the iPhone interface anyway.
Posted by: Katharine Berry | Wednesday, August 06, 2008 at 06:46 AM
Really really cool. I'm at work, chatting with some old friends via the iphone. No one can bother me. LOVE THIS. Thank you Katherine.
Posted by: Geuis Dassin | Thursday, August 07, 2008 at 01:24 PM
It doesn't work :/
Posted by: Ugh | Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 04:46 AM