On Second Life, I was recently asked, how to play a YouTube video in Second Life. Here is what I said. First, YouTube videos are in Flash format. Second Life only plays videos in Quicktime format. So, your best bet is to try and get a copy of the video from the producer in Quicktime format. If you can’t do that, there are ways to take a video from Youtube and convert it to Quicktime.

Back in May, Torley had a post, How to convert YouTube videos for playing in Second Life which describes using Vixy to convert Flash videos to other formats. While Torley talks about converting to Quicktime for Second Life, Vixy can also be used to convert to formats that can be loaded on iPods, PSP (PlayStation Portable) and cellphones. Since we’ve recently upgraded our cellphones to be able to play video, I’ll probably try loading some YouTube videos on my cellphone sometime soon.

Then in June, Torley had another post, Play YouTube Mobile videos directly in Second Life, which notes that YouTube Mobile has preconverted versions of the videos.

Torley touches a little bit on how to add these videos into Second Life, but if you want the details, it is probably best to go to the Second Life Wiki, which has an article, How To Show Video in SL. I have not tried this yet, but it is another item on my to do list.

In a related topic, Tao Takashi has a post about HTML on a prim, or media on a parcel, as Linden Labs likes to call it. Tao points to a Second Life Wiki entry on the subject. There is still a ways to go on this, but it could provide new options for bringing video into Second Life.

At the other end of the spectrum, Second Life educators are talking about Movable Life. This is a watered down web based interface to Second Life. You can chat, move around, manage your objects, and, I’m told, even do Linden dollar transactions. That final point is perhaps the most interesting since it could expand the use of Linden dollars as a viable microcurrency.

My first visit to Second Life, using the Movable Life client was disappointing. It felt like I was giving up too much of the Second Life experience. Perhaps I’ll find cases where Movable Life is useful, but not yet.

For the time being, if I want to explore Second Life with a different client, I might look at libsecondlife. There might be some interesting things that can be done with this. Right now, it seems merely to be a tool for creating campbots, landbots, copybots and other annoying features.

Here’s an idea: Does Second Life provide a script function that will check to see the client being used by an avatar? That might be a very nice feature if it doesn’t exist. It would allow prims to react differently according to the capabilities of the client being used.