This is the third in our 'Adjusting to a New World' series of articles for beginners - although some intermediate and advanced Second Lifers are also finding little tidbits that they didn't know in them. Last time, we talked about communicating by chat.

This time, we'll look at instant messaging. Instant messaging, either to single people, multiple people or defined groups is an indispensable tool for getting assistance and information. As you get more connected with people in Second Life, you'll find yourself using it more, but there's no reason not to know the ins-and-outs early on.

Instant messages (called IMs) are private, person-to-person messages, although they can be used as a group conversation tool. There's no limitation on the distance for an instant message. Instant messages cannot be overheard or intercepted by third-parties, except by extraordinary technical methods, and in those cases you've got far worse issues than someone reading your IMs. The person who can compromise your instant messages probably also has your credit card number and passwords, along with those of several thousand other people.

Opening and closing the Instant Message window

The Instant Message button is on the lower left of your Second Life toolbar, at the bottom of your screen, next to the Chat button that we discussed in detail last week. Left-clicking on it opens and closes the Instant Message window. You can also toggle the Instant Message window by pulling down the View menu and selecting Instant Message, or by using the specified keyboard shortcut (Windows users, use CONTROL T).



Features of the Instant Message Window


The instant message interface is organized into a series of tabs. The first tab New IM lists people in your friends list and groups which you are a member of. Double-clicking with the left mouse button will open a new tab ready to talk to that person or group.

Each conversation takes place in a tab. The instant message window can support many tabs at once. If you're familiar with tabbed web-browsers, or tabbed IM clients, the operation of the tabs will be quite familiar. Click on a tab to focus it and see the conversation. Type in the white text bar to send a message to the other party or parties in the IM conversation. Holding the Control key and pressing the left-square bracket or right square bracket ('[' or ']') moves the current conversational focus between tabs, cycling around when you get to the end.

As with other windows within the Second Life interface, the top bar can be dragged to reposition the window, and the textured orange marker at the bottom right allows the window to be resized.

Then we get to the more arcane widgets in the top right corner. Closing the IM window is the same as pressing CONTROL T or clicking on the Instant Message button on your Second Life toolbar; The Instant Message window snaps shut, contents intact, until you call it up again.

Closing the current IM tab (which can also be done with the blue Close button at the bottom right of the Instant Message window) will close the current conversation. The current tab and it's information are discarded. If your conversation is with more than one person, they will each get a text message that you have left the IM session.

The 'Tear off' control separates the tab into window of its own. You can move and reposition the window on your screen as you can do with any other window in Second Life. If you use the Tear Off control again, the separated window is reattached as a tab to your Instant Message window (always on the far right). If you are careful to not accidentally close IM tabs/windows you can use this to sort active conversation tabs so that they are all grouped together -- This is very handy when you have many active and inactive IM conversations at once.

The Profile button on the bottom right (next to the Close button), allows you to view the profile of the person with whom you are having the conversation. If you are having the conversation with multiple people, it will show you the profile of the first person who spoke (other than yourself). People's profiles are useful and informative, and we'll be looking more in-depth at those in a later column.

Starting a conversation with a person

There are a number of ways you can start an IM conversation with another person in Second Life. You can right click on the person you wish to talk to, and select the lower right option SEND IM. You can access their profile through Second Life's Search function (or by double-clicking on a calling card) and using the Instant Message button on their profile. You can double-click on their name in your friends list or in the New IM tab of the Instant Message Window. Each of these will pop open a new IM tab. Then just type your text, and press Enter (often also called Return).

If the person you wish to talk to is offline, the message will be saved for them. Many people have the option set for Instant Messages to be sent to their email address when they are not logged into Second Life. They can reply to your Instant Messages by replying to one of these special emails, even if they are unable to log into Second Life at the time.

Either way, if a person seems to be offline, go ahead and IM them anyway. Think of it as leaving a message on their answering machine.


Starting a conversation with a group


If you double-click on the name of a group that you are a member of in the New IM tab, a new tab will pop open with the name of that group. Sending messages through this tab will send them to every person who is online and who is a member of the group. Some groups have dozens, or hundreds of members, and you should consider that before you send your message. Some groups welcome casual conversation and chatter, others prefer that only messages directly relevant to the group take place.

Starting a conversation with a few friends


There are a few ways to do this. The simplest way is to click on the first of the people you want to talk to in your Friends window. Then hold down the Control key and click on the name of each other person you want included in your conference call. When you have selected them all click on the IM button in the bottom section of the friends Window.

You can also copy and paste Calling Cards into a folder, and then IM them as a group, by right clicking on the folder in your inventory. The IM tab will be named for the folder, so be sure and give the folder a useful name.

Configuring your IM options

Several settings affect your Instant Messages. Press CONTROL P (or pull down the Edit menu and select Preferences), and then select Communications from the purple buttons on the left of the preferences window. We've discussed some of these previously.

The first option is Send IM to Email, and will email you any IM you are sent while you are offline, or that -- for whatever reason -- cannot reach you while you are inworld. Occasionally a message may be unable to find you during the brief moments that you are teleporting from one place to another. This will send all missed messages to your email.

You can change your email address on the Second Life Website. The Earthlink spam protection system will prevent you ever getting any of these messages. Each email contains a special return address that's good for up to 72 hours or so. Replying to that message will allow you to send an IM in reply to the person. Whatever text is in the email you send will be shown to them (including your mail signature -- so if your privacy counts, just watch out for that).

Generally, this option is highly recommended.

Show timestamps in IM prefixes each IM with the current time in SLT (Second Life Time, the same as California time). Very handy especially if one or both of you is distracted during an IM discussion.

Log Instant Messages writes lines of chat to a text file on your computer, as they happen. Even if you crash one second later, there's a record.

The Change Path button selects a folder where your logs will be written to. I use P:\_logs myself, so my IM conversation history is saved to P:\_logs\tateru_nino\ with each conversation saved to a file with the same name as the IM tab.

Show end of last IM conversation will place the last few lines of an IM conversation from the last session into an IM tab next time it opens . This is really handy if your system crashes a lot, or you can't remember quite what you were talking about with a specific person last time. Highly recommended.

Busy Mode Response is what people get the first time they send an IM to you while you are set Busy. You can set yourself in or out of Busy mode by pulling down the World menu and selecting Set Busy. This is a handy way of putting up the do-not-disturb sign, but watch out. There's a catch.



Things to watch out for


When you are in Busy Mode, you will not see chat typed by other people (unless you see the chat history window open), or see IMs from other people (unless you have your Instant Message Window open). Also, if anyone tries to send you objects, those objects will be silently dumped into your Trash folder. Never use Busy mode when you're shopping!

If you receive too many Instant messages while you are offline, Second Life will not keep storing them for you, and will throw the excess away. Ideally turn on Send IM to Email to mitigate this, make sure you have an email address. You don't need invitations for a gmail account anymore, so if you don't have an email account you can use, this is a good excuse to go get one.

Also, as mentioned above, there are times when the system may be momentarily unable to locate you (most often while you are in the middle of teleporting from one place to another, and for a few seconds aren't actually anywhere). Messages sent to you under those circumstances can be lost, as you will appear to be momentarily offline. As above, have those IMs diverted to a friendly email address.