Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Newbie discovers Skype!

Someone just asked me how much time I spend in Second Life on a weekly basis. My immediate answer: not much, hardly any time at all. My thoughtful answer: about 1 hour minimum, maybe 6-8 hours max when I'm attending author events. That doesn't seem like a lot until you type it out like that, but it also doesn't *feel* like a lot. Maybe because when I'm in-world I'm so engaged with other people I don't notice the time passing.

For example, I spent a delightful 2 hours in-world last week with Kate, Connie, and Eden via their avatars, shopping (of course) and just generally gabbing via Skype.

I have to say, the Skype experience absolutely made the outing twice as fun. There was a little bit of overtalk, but once we found our rhythm it was so much easier and faster to share thoughts, ideas, reactions, etc. via voice instead of stopping to type it out in local chat.

We'd tried the in-world voice option before, but gave it up due to insurmountable static and volume issues. Skype worked smoothly and the four of us chatted freely and easily as never before. As Kate put it:

Once you go Skype, you'll never go type!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Jenny, I love Skype and it worked great for our Second Life use. There's a great chat feature too so don't go discounting the type just yet. ;)

Jenny Bullough said...

Thanks Eden -- we should try that chat feature out soon!