Link: Technology Review: New Portal to Second Life: Your Phone.
With new software for mobile phones, citizens of the burgeoning online universe Second Life will never have to leave their cozy virtual world, even when they're away from their computers. The new software is a program that lets cellular users with Java-based, Internet-capable phones log in to Second Life remotely, see who else is "in-world," and communicate with them via text messaging.
Comverse, the wireless multimedia networking company that developed the software, demonstrated it this week for wireless carriers at the 3GSM conference in Barcelona, Spain. Attendees using Comverse's phones could see and manipulate avatars who appeared in Comverse's virtual 3GSM booth inside Second Life. Using simple commands, they could direct the avatar to walk around the booth, identify other avatars, and send them greetings via SMS, MMS, or instant messaging. And in a twist typical of today's virtual environments, people logged in to Second Life over traditional PC connections could walk into the virtual Comverse booth and pick up virtual phones that connected them directly to fellow members logged in from their real phones at the real booth.
