Google Launched “Lively” to Create Virtual World on Web
Google Lively is the new 3D virtual world created by the world’s largest search engine. It’s free. And it changes everything. Especially for telecommuters. Google Lively is billed as a “chat experience” using avatars.
In a nutshell, it’s a 3d chat app where users can customize avatars and create environments (rooms) with stuff they pick from a product catalog. You need to install a browser (FF, IE, Win-only) plug-in to participate. And while it is not exactly an MMO (On Line Game), it is more similar to Second Life.
Google says, “You’re about to embark on a chat experience in which you can communicate and express yourself using avatars in your very own space. Choose an avatar and use it to make friends and chat. Create rooms, decorate them to your liking, and make sure to invite your friends over.”
Features:
- Lively Rooms
Similar to avatars, Lively offers several templates for starting your room that can then be customized – for example, a 5 room apartment, or a desert island (rooms can be outdoors). From there, you can do things like add your own background music, insert furniture, pull in photos from Picasa (and other services) and embed YouTube videos on a virtual plasma screen TV. Once a room has been created, embed code allows you to copy it to any Web page. Each room also has its own URL on Lively, if you prefer to just send your friends to your room directly.
- User Interactions
When you’re in a room, there are text chatting options, emotions (angry, happy, say hello, etc.), and you can move around furniture (if the room owner permits it). Some of the emotions are tied to the text chat – for example, if you type “hello,” your avatar will wave. If you enter a room and there is no one it, you can leave a message and a piece of furniture for the room owner.
- The Social Graph
For now, Lively has its own buddy list that you build one-by-one by inviting your friends. However, Engineering Manager Niniane Wang hints that the product will eventually move to support the porting of your friends from other social networks – per initiatives like Facebook Connect, MySpace Data Availability, and Google’s own Friend Connect product. There are already Facebook and OpenSocial
applications for Lively that allow you to see which of your friends are signed in.
Google spent several months testing Lively among a group of Arizona State University students before opening the service to the public through its “Labs” section — a technology sandbox set up for the company’s experimental products. LIvely is an ambitious new project from Google, and one that will be worth watching in the months ahead.
Source: Mashable
Filed under Open Source Platform, application software