Katharine Berry Creates IRC-to-Second Life Chat Bridge

Want to chat with someone in Teen Second Life? You can if you hit this link, and more importantly, if anyone in TSL is in range of a listening object created by Miss Katharine Berry, the 17 year old wunderkind who created AjaxLife, Second Life's first web-to-SL interface. (In the screen grab at right, that's me "Hamlet" in the IRC window, chatting with Katharine and some other teen SLers in-world; you can my IRC chat appearing as text in Miss Berry's Local Chat window.)

While her system currently works from IRC-to-Teen Second Life, she tells me, "There's no particular reason for it to be limited to the teen grid except that I'm there (indeed, it would be a legal means of Main Grid/Teen Grid communication.) You can try it out from the IRC side by joining #anything on irc.ajaxlife.net port 6667, if you have an IRC client. (Or, if you don't, there's a web-based client at irc.ajaxlife.net)." This is the first IRC-to-Second Life local chat bridge I'm aware of, though an OpenSim-to-SL chat bridgefor avatar-to-avatar Instant Messages also exists. "It's basically designed to extend a public IRC channel into a public space (or several spaces, in which case they'll all cross-link too) in SL", Katharine says.

Katharine Berry will join Second Life's main grid in the next few months, and will bring this technology with her. For now, however, she's busy completing high school -- and working part-time at Plurk, developing the microblogging service's mobile functionality.

After the break, geek-heavy details on how this works code-wise, with another screengrab courtesy TSL's Ben Lineker, depicting this working in a Windows environment.

"An object in SL notifies it whenever someone enters or leaves range, and whenever they say something, using llHTTPRequest," Katharine told me via Plurk. "Messages are sent from IRC to SL using the HTTP-in functionality that is in the process of being released right now. It used to use XML-RPC for this, but that was much slower (~3/4 second lag) and tended to stop working. The system is designed such that anywhere that one of my objects exists will immediately relay messages to/from IRC, and other objects."

Comments

[Sasy Scarborough]

WOW just WOW, we really do have some talented youth in the teen grid. YAY SL for giving them a platform to be so creative with.

xoxSasyxox

[The Chairman]

There have been other IRC-SL relays, such as the system created by Masakazu Kojima for W-HAT and the bot-driven version created by the libsecondlife team.

[Chakalak Skall]

The fun gals at W-hat have that too. :)

[16:46] [SYSTEM] JOIN: Chakalak Skall has entered what
[16:46] [whatSW@28] Rabit Barkley: hello Chakalak Skall
[16:47] Chakalak Skall: hi
[16:47] Chakalak Skall: just wanted to ask if you've read this ->
[16:47] Chakalak Skall: http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2009/07/sltoirc-chat-bridge.html#more
[16:48] [IRC] Twimint: ours is better
[16:48] [IRC] Twimint: otherwise who cares about the teen grid~
[16:48] Chakalak Skall: as far as I know you should have won the 1st prize
[16:48] Chakalak Skall: nwn does
[16:48] [SYSTEM] JOIN: Censoret Lunt has entered what
[16:49] [IRC] Twimint: i dont even know what nwn is
[16:49] [IRC] Twimint: neverwinter nights???
[16:49] [IRC] Rabit: never wear nightgowns
[16:49] [IRC] Rabit: .com
[16:49] Chakalak Skall: nowwhatnoobs
[16:50] Chakalak Skall: however.. just why id yours better?
[16:50] [IRC] BluesWearsShot: noone cares go away
[16:50] Chakalak Skall: ban me
[16:50] [IRC] Rabit: because we had ours first and it is superior
[16:50] Chakalak Skall: that's right
[16:50] [whatSW@33] Mac Teat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlTXDOq3bv4

[Muse Carmona]

I have a great deal of respect for Katharine and her coding work - especially for someone so young - and this is likely the first IRC -> SL chatbridge on the teen grid. But it is NOT the first IRC to SL chatbridge by a long shot.

Ash Qin / Ash-Fox made an IRC -> SL chatbridge on the main grid long ago - I believe SL 1.9 (http://www.quickfox.net/services/slgateway). I have used this chatbridge personally for several one-time mixed reality events (most notably Living Game Worlds IV) and a number of small ongoing groups use it (Gimp Girl is one I know of for sure because I facilitate that, but there are others); Ash always wears one. If anyone gets the credit for being "first" it should be Ash.

In addition, Adam Frisby recently developed a slightly more robust solution for Open Sim: http://www.adamfrisby.com/blog/2009/05/adventures-in-text-only-opensim/.

[Extropia DaSilva]

>Katharine Berry will join Second Life's main grid in the next few months, and will bring this technology with her'.

If her name is not 'Katherine Linden' within a week of arriving on the main grid, I say we should storm the Linden offices with pitchforks and flaming torches;)

[Doreen Garrigus]

I'm with Extropia on this one. This is an extremely talented person who literally grew up with her hands in SL code. What an incredible asset she would be. The only stopping point I can see is that she is already working part time and going to school. High school. I'm willing to bet college is next. She might not have time for us for a few years.

[radar]

I guess it's already been pointed out that this isn't the first IRC -> SL bridge. Here's a free one that I tested out on Coronaverse once:

https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=237593

They're also using these in Insilico and I'm sure lots of other places.

None of that is to distract from Katharine Berry, she always seems to work on interesting things. Kudos to everybody in SL who use it as a toolbox instead of just a 7-11 parking lot on a friday night.

[radar]

^^^ I wrote Coronaverse when I really meant Corona Cay. I tested it on the island, not the podcast... dar....