Sparkle for iPhone and Second Life
Written on March 24, 2009 by Katherine W. Prawl
Longtime Scilands buddy, Hackshaven Harford, Twittered this week about a new app he’d found called Sparkle IM from Genkii. 
Sparkle is a virtual worlds (VW) client for the iPhone that allows the user to login and communicate via instant messages with friends, and via proximity chat with avatars that are in the same location. Sorry, you probably need to try a VW like Second Life to understand what that’s about and why it is an exciting development. For now, please just accept that being able to connect to Second Life and interact live with others there even when you can’t log in normally is a big deal. For instance, I’ll be able to attend meetings from my iPhone and see what is being said in chat even if I don’t have my computer set up or if I’m in an internet café without my laptop.
Besides Second Life, Sparkle will connect to other grids as well, such as OSGrid or Second Life’s beta grid. Right now, those three are the only VWs available, but I’m sure others will be added as demand warrants. It’s possible to set up any number of accounts for various grids, limited only by the number of avatars you have. In fact, you can even sign up for a new account via Sparkle! Select the approprite service, fill in your account username and password, and there you go.
Choose the account you want to login with from the resulting list, click the “Go!” button, and your friends list appears on the next screen, with those online indicated with highlighted stars beside their names, while offline avatars are shown with dimmed stars. To send an IM to one, you select the name, then click the “IM” button on the next screen. A window with the virtual keyboard appears, and you proceed to communicate.
It seems pretty simple, and it is easy to use, but the implications are really awesome. The only real gripe I have about it is the requirement to use WiFi, but there is probably no way around that. Second Life in particular probably needs more bandwidth than the plain old cellular signal can provide. As it is, people who have very long friends lists (like me) have reported long waits to log in. Genkii’s tech support is working on it, and in fact I’ve had better luck logging in with my main account lately, after the first few attempts when it took several long minutes.
Sparkle IM gets a high rating from me. I’ve been waiting for someone to publish an iPhone app for connecting to Second Life, and this is a good one that works. Thanks, Genkii!
March 24th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Glad it works for you Kat! So far I haven’t been able to login.
Too many friends?
March 24th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
That could be it, Hack. Several people have mentioned problems, but I’ve found that after it finally loaded, the next time I logged in it worked quickly. I even got in using EDGE instead of WiFi! Keep trying… Meanwhile, tech support says they think they have a fix, and have submitted an update to the App Store, so don’t give up on it.
January 4th, 2010 at 8:38 am
I like blogs like this one, I am sure you put an effort on it to keep it up. Nice post, grazie mille .