Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Beta-testing AvaLine

Arahan emailed me today to tell me about AvaLine, a new way to use voice chat in Second Life -- it enables you to receive phone calls to your avatar. It's only in beta testing just now, but I thought I'd be one of the 1,000 people who would give it a shot!

Here's how it works:

1.) Dial one of the numbers listed below:
Boston: +1 617-861-0749
Chicago: +1 312-348-3694
Dallas: +1 972-813-0067
Los Angeles: +1 213-271-2575
New York: +1 212-660-9951
Philadelphia: +1 215-475-5291
San Francisco: +1 415-490-9443
Washington DC: +1 202-629-9859
London, UK: +44 20-7100-5624
(* long-distance rates may apply, check before you call)

2.) When prompted, enter the access code of the person you want to call, followed by the pound sign (#). [Obviously, you have to know their access code beforehand.]

-- If the person is logged in, and is currently accepting voice calls, they will get a notification, which looks like this:

Beta-testing AvaLine - incoming call

If the call is accepted, it connects the way a regular voice-chat IM would:

Beta-testing AvaLine - answered call

-- If the person is offline, is unavailable, or does not have voice enabled, you will be able to leave a voice message, which will be emailed to them in the form of an .mp3 file:

Beta-testing AvaLine - message in email Inbox

Bear in mind that the person you call WILL be able to see what phone number you're calling from.

For more information about this service, or to sign up for the beta-test yourself, check out the following link:
http://secondlife.com/avaline
(Note that you will have to sign in to the forums using your SL user name & password.)

In case anybody is interested, my access code is 807141. Leave me a message!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It's a cool idea, useful to give to people who you don't talk to on Skype, or don't want calling you at home. Probably has most use for businesses that have a presence in SL but I just like the concept of people being able to call my avatar.