Blogging from Second Life

I have blogged from Second Life since the year of 2005. It originally started out with me taking screen shots, saving them to my local hard disk, and manually posting the content to my blog outside of the virtual world. Since that time, I have made much progress to blogging directly in-world as well as cross-posting to my accounts on social media sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Ning, Plurk and Twitter.

Many parts of this article cover blogging in general. If you do not have a Second Life account, there is still information here that you may find quite useful in regards to cross-posting to multiple networks.

The general goal for this article is to enable you to take a snapshot from within Second Life, send it as an email, and then have it appear on a traditional blog as a post through automated processes. It is like moblogging (Mobile Blogging) or photo blogging since their is an image with each post, except that you are not using a digital or camera phone. Perhaps it could be coined as screen blogging, snapshot blogging, or game blogging. From there, I will expand how to cross-post to social networks and use the technique to take advantage of other services.

Many of the services are provided free for everyone to use. In this article, I will attempt to give multiple solutions for flexibility. The topics covered are:

1. Setup a blog
2. Get a Second Life
   1. Blogging Tips for snapshots
3. Snapshot Hosting
4. Cross-Posting
   1. Feed Polling
   2. Status Aggregators
5. In-world Displays
6. Additional Services
7. Future Changes

Set up a blog

Most blog software and services are free. The two services that I have used in the past are Blogger and WordPress. These are by no means your only limit. Many blog services expose an API that allows you to post messages to your blog in the same way as any other blog. Although many blogging platforms enable you to post via email, posting directly from Second Life will result in some extra information that is not desired. There are other services that will be covered in this article that can transform the message into a blog friendly format.

WordPress

WordPress offers you the ability to create multiple blogs to be hosted at WordPress.com for free. The blogging software for hosting your own blog is also freely available. This gives you more control over the presentation of your blog, and the features through plug-ins. Hosting a blog on wordpress.com has a limitation of the type of content that you can host. You have a limited number of themes to choose from, and you are not able to embed scripts or objects such as flash content. Tags similar to BBCode enable you to embed videos from sites such as You-Tube. Hosting the blog yourself enables you to overcome these obstacles.

https://dedricmauriac.wordpress.com/feed/

Blogger

Blogger is another free hosting service for blogs. It is now owned by Google. The software is not available to host on your own website. However, it does enable you greater control and flexibility over the general theme and layout of your site as well as the ability to add client-side scripting capabilities.

http://dedricmauriac.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

Get a Second Life

The virtual platform of this post will primarily focus on the virtual world of Second Life. While other platforms may also support similar features, many of the services covered here are compatible only with the Second Life service. At the moment, Open Simulator platforms (an emulator of the Second Life service) do not offer the ability to email snapshots. Second Life accounts are free, so go ahead and register for a free Second Life account.

User Interface of the email dialog for snapshots in Second Life

When in-world, you will have the option to take a snapshot of the environment that you see around you. Three options are available to save the snapshot to your inventory, save to your hard drive, or to email the snapshot. We will be focused on emailing snapshots. The fields available allow you to change your name, the subject, and message. Emailing snapshots to blogs or other services will often result in more information to be displayed that is undesired. To remove this information, more services are used that make use of the Snapshot API.

Blogging Tips for Snapshots

Over the years I have used many techniques to improve the process used to blog from within the Second Life viewer. I had started a wiki page in the past for Advanced Snapshot Tips. For those of us who perform the same actions constantly, we need every ounce of help that we can get to prevent Repetitive Stress Injury (RSI) such as Carpel Tunnel Syndrome.  Here are some of the things that I use daily as well as tips from others.

Multiple Recipients

You can send email to more than one email address by delimiting each address with a semicolon. Each recipient of the message will not be able to see the email address of other recipients.

HTML

Many snapshot services will accept the HTML written in your message. You can separate paragraphs by placing each paragraph between ”

” tags. Links can be used using anchor elements (link text).

Long Messages

With the introduction of the Dazzle UI, we are able to edit portions of the user interface. Initially, the message area is limited to 700 characters. You can extend the length up to 6,526 characters by editing the following file:

C:\Program Files (x86)\SecondLife\skins\default\
xui\en-us\floater_postcard.xml

When you open the file, look for the message area (or do a search for “700”) and replace the max_length property value to 6526. (Vista users may need administrative access to modify this file).

<text bottom_delta="-23" follows="top|left"
font="SansSerif" left="12" name="msg_label">
Message:</text>
<text_editor bottom_delta="-150" follows="left|top|right|bottom"
height="140" left="12" max_length="700" name="msg_form" width="420">
Type your message here.
</text_editor>

Populated Addresses

Individuals who tend to blog often from within Second Life find that they are always sending email to the same email addresses. To make it more convienient to send snapshots to these same addresses, we can populate the addresses. This can be changed when a snapshot is taken, should you choose to send to someone else. Again, Dazzle UI/XUI comes to the rescue and allows us to change the user interface. (Vista users may need administrative access to modify this file). Again, the file to open is:

C:\Program Files (x86)\SecondLife\skins\default\
xui\en-us\floater_postcard.xml

This time we are looking for the recipient email field.

<text bottom="-35" follows="top|left" font="SansSerif" left="12"
name="to_label">Recipient&apos;s Email:</text>
<line_editor bottom_delta="-6" follows="left|top"
height="20" left="120" max_length="254" name="to_form"
width="150" >
account1@yourdomain.com;account2@yourdomain.com;account3@yourdomain.com
</line_editor>

Macros

Torley Linden has been experimenting with Macro programs to capture the name and description of the parcel and paste it into the proper fields along with your email addresses using [CTRL]+[SHIFT]+[ALT]+[S]. You do not need to edit the xml files to populate these fields, but you’ll need to install some software called Phase Express and set it up. It gets pretty simple once it is ready. The added benefit is that you don’t need to reconfigure it with each upgrade of Second Life.

In the video, Torley shows that he went to the “World” menu and choose “About Land…”. You can save some mouse clicks just by clicking on the parcel information displayed at the center of your top menu bar. I couldn’t get the commands working that Torley had outlined. I modified the list and this is how I got the macro to work. Here is the Phrase content, as well as an explanation of what each step is doing. For KoinUp, you’ll have to enter your assigned email address.

{#CTRL -chars a}{#CTRL -chars c}{#CTRL {#SHIFT -chars S}}
{#sleep 1500}{#TAB -count 2}{#ENTER}{#TAB -count 2}
{#CTRL -chars v}{#CTRL {#TAB}}{#TAB -count 2}
{#CTRL -chars a}{#CTRL -chars c}{#CTRL -chars w}
{#TAB}{#CTRL -chars v}{#SHIFT {#TAB -count 3}}
pics@slpics.com;pics@slbuzz.com;pics@bloghud.com;
secret@post.koinup.com;pic@bletaverse.com;me@slprofiles.com
{#TAB -count 5}

1. {#CTRL -chars a} – select all
2. {#CTRL -chars c} – copy title
3. {#CTRL {#SHIFT -chars S}} – take snapshot
4. {#sleep 1500} – wait 1.5 seconds for snapshot to render
5. {#TAB -count 2} – tab to the “Send” button
6. {#ENTER} – click “Send” button
7. {#TAB -count 2} – move to the Subject field
8. {#CTRL -chars v} – paste the title of the land
9. {#CTRL {#TAB}} – activate “About Land” dialog
10. {#TAB -count 2} – tab to “Description” field. (If you have edit rights, on the land, then you only need 1 tab)
11. {#CTRL -chars a} – select all
12. {#CTRL -chars c} – copy description
13. {#CTRL -chars w} – close “About Land” dialog, leaving “Email Snapshot” dialog active
14. {#TAB} – move to message field
15. {#CTRL -chars v} – paste parcel description
16. {#SHIFT {#TAB -count 3}} – Move to “Recipient’s Email” field
17. pics@slpics.com;pics@slbuzz.com;pics@bloghud.com;
    secret@post.koinup.com;pic@bletaverse.com;
    me@slprofiles.com – enter as email addresses
18. {#TAB -count 5} – move to the “Send” field

Credit goes to Fred Frederix for letting me know about Torley’s article.

Snapshot Hosting

Most snapshot hosting services for Second Life accept snapshots through email. Some will allow you to upload them directly through the website as file attachments. It is possible to send your snapshots to multiple services by delimiting email addresses with a semicolon.

Snapzilla

Snapzilla is a free service that allows you to see what is going on across the grid. It is presented as a large image gallery of snapshots. You can see a collection of snapshots that you have uploaded from your hard drive or sent via email, as well as those from everyone else. It is not necessary to create an account on Snapzilla unless you want the ability to edit your images once they are posted. Anyone can send a snapshot from within Second Life to the address: pics@slpics.com. Snapzilla will parse out details about your post including the place, avatar name, message, and subject. Information in the name field will be parsed as tags.

Snapzilla offers the ability to cross-post to Flickr, but it requires manual intervention to do so. It also offers the ability to post to Plurk, Twitter, Facebook, and Posterous, but they too need you to take action manually to cross-post the snapshots. The goal of this article is to have this done for you. While Snapzilla has a large community, it lacks the ability to share its content through an automated means. If you do use Snapzilla, then the RSS feed will be the answer to cross-posting to other websites. However, it does not include SLurl’s within the RSS feed.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/PersonalRss.aspx?Name=Dedric%20Mauriac

BlogHUD

BlogHUD is similar to Snapzilla, except that snapshots are presented in a blog format along the side of an overhead map that shows the location of where the snapshot was taken. The service is free to post to, but the ability to cross-post to other blogs requires a purchase of BlogHUD pro (1500 L$, or about $6 US). The HUD itself is only needed to post text messages to the service either through text chat or note cards. Images are posted through the email address pics@bloghud.com. BlogHUD is able to cross-post to blogging platforms such as WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Friendster, and LiveJournal. The benefit here is that BlogHUD automates the process of cross-posting to your blog without the need to interact with it. It also offers the ability to post a copy of your images to your Flickr account as well. With the nature of blogs, blogHUD also offers an RSS feed to your posts.

http://feeds.bloghud.com/dedricmauriac

BlogHUD has a few caveats. Their are times when the same snapshot will be cross posted more than once, and others when it will not be posted at all. In general, it takes longer for BlogHUD to read email than Snapzilla does. In addition, BlogHUD will add a watermark to each snapshot indicating the avatar and place, along with a logo of its service. Blog entries that are cross posted will not have SLurl‘s embedded to the locations, but have links to the original BlogHUD post instead. Entries posted to Flickr will not have any links except for one pointing back to the BlogHUD home page, and will be resized down to a smaller size.

Although BlogHUD Pro asks for your Flickr upload email address, you can use other addresses such as your PixelPipe address to enable cross-posting to over 100 networks.

Mixoom

Mixoom (formally known as SLBuzz) is a community site similar to Snapzilla with it’s image gallery, but also has events, analytical statistics for visitors to your place in-world, and profiles as well. Images are sent through email addresses to the following:

• x@mixoom.com – Mixoom, Flickr, and twitter
• pics@mixoom.com – mixoom only
• flickr@mixoom.com – mixoom and Flickr
• twitter@mixoom.com – mixoom and twitter

Bletaverse

Bletaverse is a community website offering personal blogs that can have messages and locations provided through an in-world hud. Snapshots can be emailed to it through pic@bletaverse.com and are able to pull out information to display a slurl. An RSS feed is available for each avatars blog. Logging into the site gives you the option to connect to your twitter account.

http://bletaverse.com/Dedric%20Mauriac/feed/rss

Credit goes to Amisha March for introducing me to Bletaverse.

KoinUp

KoinUp is a service for multiple virtual worlds. It is able to read snapshot emails from Second Life to parse place, message and subject. Each account has a unique email address to post snapshots to. You can also upload images from your local disk drive as well. KoinUp offers the ability to cross-post to both Facebook and Flickr automatically. Images posted to Flickr will be in their original size, and include a link to the place in-world. KoinUp also exposes an RSS feed of your latest works.

http://www.koinup.com/api/feed/works/?un=dedricmauriac

Credit goes to Pierluigi Casolari for reminding me of KoinUp’s ability to cross-post to Flickr.

Flickr

Flickr is a photo sharing site that many people use outside of Second Life. Flickr is not meant for use with Virtual Worlds, but a large community has grown that heavily uses this website. Most snapshot hosting services offer the ability to cross-post your snapshots to Flickr either through the Flickr API, or through your Flickr upload email address tied to your Flickr account. Sending images directly from Second Life to your Flickr email address will have negative results by displaying unnecessary information as well as adding a Second Life “Eye In Hand” logo to your library with each snapshot. Flickr is free, but will downsize your images unless you have a Pro account. In addition, it will only display your most recent images until you go with a Pro account.

http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?id=90816264@N00&lang=en-us&format=rss_200

One added benefit of using Flickr is its capability of cross-posting to blogs and twitter accounts. Sites such as BlogHUD, KoinUp, and Snapzilla allow you to post images to your Flickr account through an email address. Rather than using your Flickr upload email address, you can use the blog upload email address to have your images cross-posted to a blog.

Cross-posting

If you went through BlogHUD, then you already have the option to cross-post to a blog. With other services, Flickr is the primary choice that most other services offer cross-posting ability for. No matter which way you go, you will undoubtedly need two services to cross post. The first would be an RSS polling service that monitors your feeds for any new content. The second service will be for distributing your content to multiple networks. Throughout most of this article, I’ve tried to outline the RSS feeds along with RSS icons associated with each service to help point out the format of some of the feed URL’s associated with your account name in each service.

Feed Polling

Over time, many services have come and gone for RSS polling. These would be services such as Ping Vine, HelloTxtFeed, and RSS Forward. Where some have failed, others seem to spring up to take their place. These RSS submitter tools find newly posted content in RSS feeds and send them to status aggregators.

Twitter Feed

Twitter Feed is a service that will poll an RSS feed and repost the information to Twitter, Face Book, Laconica, Ping.fm, and Hellotxt. You can set the frequency of polling and information that will be passed on such as the title, details, and link. The limitation with Twitter Feed is that it is primarily used for Micro Blogging. Microblogging is a blog composed of very short messages. Twitter and Plurk are forms of microblogging since they are limited to 140 characters for each update.

Notify.Me

Notify.me is a service that can pull content from multiple sources such as RSS feeds, and publish the content to multiple destinations such as IM (gmail, google talk, adium, and pidgin), SMS (mobile text messages), Email, a Notify.Me app, and Ping.fm.

Notify.me is used primarily for microblogging. It tends to strip out html content in your posts and includes a link to the original content.

RSS2PING

RSS2PING, is a script that was created to parse an RSS feed and post to Ping.FM. You’ll need to host this PHP script on your web server and setup Curl to execute the script repeatedly. Although the script is not yet released, you can test the service on the site. Keep you eyes posted on the ping.fm to RSS page.

It may be possible that a service will become available for this application as well.

The domain for rss2ping.com is already reserved with a vanilla message.

Status Aggregators

Distributing content among social networks is like a “bulk send” feature. It enables more people to receive your content on the platform that they are most comfortable with. One note of using services like these is that you often have to traverse multiple networks to find any replies to your content. Services such as Minggle allow you to keep in touch across many networks in one central location. In addition, if you need to make corrections or update content that had been relayed to multiple services, you will need to revisit each network and make the changes manually.

You may choose to opt-in to using multiple services since each may offer the ability to cross-post to networks that the others do not support yet. However, there are constant changes and new additions to the services that seem to compete.

Be aware of cross-posting etiquette.

Previous aggregators have also come and gone. Among them was Socialthing, which appears to be Lifestream from AOL, but is very limited in it’s ability to cross-post.

Ping.FM

Ping.fm (recently acquired by Seesmic), allows you to pass your content on to multiple social networks: Status Updates, Micro-blogs, Blogs (Notes), Photos, Links, and Location.

Different networks allow different types of content passed on, so you’ll be limited in some networks. For each network, you can also control what type of updates you would like to distribute. Current networks supported are: Facebook Pages, Present.ly, StreetMavens, Radar, Delicious, Radar, Yammer, Tagged, Laconi.ca, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Ning, GTalk Status, AIM Status, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Identi.ca, Brightkite, FriendFeed, Plurk, Jaiku, Blogger, Plaxo Pulse, Bebo, hi5, Xanga, WordPress.com, Friendster, Koornk, Diigo, YouAre, Multiply, Flickr, Vox, TypePad, ShoutEm, myYearbook, Posterous, Photobucket, Yahoo Profiles, and Yahoo Meme.

Ping.fm also supports a Custom URL that will process information passed to it from Ping.fm. Many sites can make use of this method for their own status changes without the need for direct Ping.fm integration. In addition, Ping.fm also provides an API for developers to send content directly to ping.fm.

HelloTxt

HelloTxt is similar to Ping.fm in that it passes content on to multiple social media sites. HelloTxt appears to be more oriented towards Microblogging. It also appears to offer cross posting to more services that are not in the United States.

Networks supported: twitter, Facebook, Peoplesound, Linkedin, Plurk, MySpace, Friendfeed, Jaiku, Bebo, Hi5, FB Pages, Tumblr, Identica, Plaxo, Blip.fm, Blogger, Brightkite, Buboo, Buzzherd, Delicious, Digu, Fanfou, Fazkut, Feecle, Flickr, Frazr, Friendster, Gozub, Hictu, Imeem, Jisko, Jiwai, Khaces, Koornk, Kwippy, Laconica like, LiveJournal, Meemi, Mexicodiario, Multiply, Ning, Numpa, Plerb, Posterous, Presently, Remember…, Seesmic, Shoutem, Skyrock, Socialmedian, Tuenti, 12Seconds, Utterli, WordPress, Yammer, YouAre, Zuosa, Blip.pl.

In addition, HelloTxt also supports a Custom URL and API for developers to send content directly to HelloTxt.

Sendible

Sendible has an added benefit in that it can both monitor RSS feeds and cross-post to multiple networks. Unfortunately, you’ll need a pro account in order to use custom feeds starting at five dollars per month. In addition, you have many other limitations such as number of “sends” per month and number of accounts/services. It appears to be more of a service for marketing than for common bloggers.

Sendible can post to email, SMS, and the following services:

• Social Networks: Facebook Wall Post, Myspace Message, LinkedIn Message, BrightKite Message, FriendFeed
• Blogs & Microblogs: Twitter, Plurk, Blogger, Facebook Fan Page, Tumblr, WordPress.com, WordPress, MovableType, Typepad, MetaWebLog
• Status Updates: Bebo, Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, BrightKite, Facebook Post
• Photos: Flickr
• Link Sharing: Delicious, Facebook Page, Facebook Post

Pixelpipe

Pixelpipe is another content distribution gateway that lets you post text, photos, videos, and audio files. It probably has the largest support for cross-posting to multiple social networks. You can post through a custom email address, as well as through an API. Not many services tie into Pixelpipe at the moment, so chances are that you would have to upload your own images manually. However, the large number of sites that it posts to are reason enough to look into this service. If you can find a way to post to Pixel Pipe, you can use it to cross-post to Ping.fm, giving you an even larger number of social media sites to distribute your content.

Services supported: 12seconds.tv, 23, 72photos, adobe share, Atom Blog, Bebo, Blip.pl, Blip.tv, Blogger, box.net, brightkite, Buzznet, Chirps, Dailymotion, Docstoc, Drop.io, Dropshots, Drupal, Email, Evernote, Expono, Facebook, Flickr, Fotki, FotoTime, Friendfeed, Friendster, FTP, Gallery, Google Docs, Google Docs OCR, Google Talk, Hi5, Hyves, Identi.ca, imageloop, ImageShack, Img.ly, ipernity, iReport, Jaiku, Kewego, Kodak, Koornk, Kyte, LinkedIn, Livejournal, Metacafe, MetaWeblog, MobileMe, Moblog, MobyPicture, Movable Type, MySpace, Nokia Share on OVI, Ourdoings, PhotoBox, Photobucket, Photoservice, Pic.im, Picasa, PictureTrail, Pikchur, Pikeo, Ping.fm, Plaxo, Plerb, Plurk, Posterous, Radar, Screentweet, Scribd, Sendspace, Shutterfly, Skyrock, Slideshare, Smugmug, Snapfish, Snapmylife, Tinypic, Tumblr, Twaud.io, TweetPhoto, Twicli, Twitgoo, Twitlense, TwitPic, Twitrpix, Twitsnaps, Twitter, TwitVid, TwitVid.io, TypePad, Utterli, Viddler, Viewbook, Vimeo, Vox, Webshots, Windows Live Spaces, WordPress.com, Xanga, Yahoo, Yahoo Meme, Yfrog, Youare, YouTube, and Zoomr.

TubeMogul

Although TubeMogul is strictly for video, it is related to status aggregators due to the way in which it works. Using TubeMogul, you are able to upload a video (such as Machinima), and it will cross post to many video sites. I have just recently started to use this service.

TubeMogul is able to cross post to: YouTube, DailyMotion, Yahoo, MySpace, Metacafe, Blip.tv, Veoh, Vimeo Plus, i2TV.

You can post to more sites if you submit an application. You’ll be asked to describe the type of video content that you have. Keep in mind that these additional services require specific types of video content (ie – only “How To” videos should be sent to Howcast). Additional destinations: Revver, Brightcove, Viddler, Sevenload, VideoJug, Zoopy, MSN Video, Break, eBaums World, StupidVideos, Sclipo, Howcast, 5min, Graspr, GrindTV, and StreetFire.

TubeMogul can also update your Facebook and Twitter status once the video’s are uploaded.

In-World News

Individuals may want content from their blogs or other RSS feeds to display at their place in-world. I have created two products that can aid in this goal.

RSS Reader

The first tool that I made for RSS feeds was the RSS Reader. This little gadget can work with RSS, Atom, and RDF feeds. The title of the most recent feeds displays above it as hover text. Clicking on the object will open a URL to the blog itself.

Behind the scenes, the RSS reader contacts a web page that I own that transforms an RSS feed to SSS (Second Simple Syndication). If you already have your own SSS feed, then you do not need to go through my service to transform content.

The product is listed on XStreetSL.

Feed Display

The RSS Reader had many limitations to it. The Feed Display is the next version of the RSS Reader. It displays the text of each post on primitives using letter positioning (similar to XY text), along with the name of the blog. Individuals can walk up to the board and click arrows to navigate back and forth between each post. They can subscribe to the RSS feed, visit the blog, or visit the post. They can also play embedded podcasts or videos attached to the post if the display has access to interact with the parcels media.

The Feed display works on the same concept as the RSS Reader about RSS, RDF, Atom, and SSS feeds.

The product can be found on XStreetSL.

Additional Services

Subscribe-O-Matic

Many of the cross-posting services also allow you to subscribe to more than one feed. This permits you to also push out content from other services such as Subscribe-o-Matic messages. Subscribe-o-matic is a popular service used in-world due to the limitations of groups that people may be a member of. It’s easy to find the RSS feed if you are a group owner, as it is displayed when you log into the service on the web site. Subscribe-O-Matic is a form of microblogging in-world with it’s short messages. Content associated with the messages (note cards, landmarks, objects, clothing, sounds, animations and gestures) will not be available through the web. An API is not available to post messages to subscribe-o-matic at this time, but you can easily pass those messages on your social networks using the feed polling services.

http://www.subscribeomatic.com/messages/feed/1522

Odiogo

There are methods to convert the text of your blog posts into a podcast through a voice synthesizer service. Odiogo is a service that does this for you. Once you set it up, it continues to poll your RSS feed and creates separate podcast episodes for each post on your blog. Each post is proceeded with a message stating that it was created with the Odiogo service. Offering MP3 files of your blog enables you to list your blog in iTunes as a podcast, and other popular podcast directories.

Future Changes

The future capabilities of the Second Life viewer is anyones guess. Rumors are abound about new changes that may introduce client-side scripting to the 2.0 viewer. If this is the case, it may be possible to send snapshots directly to service API’s such as Ping.fm rather than the complex nature of automated cross-posting through many services. Only time will tell what the next viewer will be capable of.