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Instant Messaging Goes Graphical
williampiv writes "For most of the millions of people around the world who regularly use instant messaging, the communications tool has largely been a text-only experience in which typed emoticons offer only minimal clues to someone's state of mind.
The recent launch of two services -- a brand new, fully three-dimensional chat-room product known as IMVU, and AOL Instant Messenger's new 3-D SuperBuddy icons -- is putting the spotlight on a major shift by the leading IM providers toward making graphical avatars a fundamental personalization feature."
A graphical, 3D chat environment? Oh, you mean Star Wars: Galaxies!
I thought Microsoft had a similar product a couple of years ago. Microsoft Chat or Comic Chat or something in the kind... You could select a comic character and assign it facial expressions and such. :)
It died a silent death
Why is this news?
Banaaaana!
A webcam pretty much does the same thing - except you don't have avatars, you ARE the avatar.
If I may point out, this isnt anything new. Blaxxun, Activeworlds, Secondlife are all similar 3D platforms, but have a great deal more experience & interactivity (having all existed for some years now). I posted some info on my favourite 3D platform at the moment (Secondlife) here
(Also check out Activeworlds & There (nb: there is more a social use, like the topic, rather than a 3D platform on it's own.))
#!/bin/csh cat $0
Is there a skin of someone who looks like me sitting at their computer in their underwear and sipping folgers? Perhaps with some 3D rendered clothes on the floor and a bowl of dried up ramen next to the keyboard?
From a person that uses Apple, Windows, and LInux on a daily basis, I hope that Apple allows Whatever technology they are building into Tiger for the new IChatAV Teleconferencing, they allow to be ported to other OS's.
I haven't logged on to it in years (read: since maybe 1999), but I always remember that I thought it was pretty cool given the 3D capabilities of x86 machines at the time (read: none), and it wasn't TOO bad for dialup. Even played MIDI tracks while you were walking around. I think they eventually went to a pay-for-service model, and hopefully they eventually adopted some kind of 3D acceleration technology (via ActiveX?)
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
I'm probably just too much of an IRC addict to like the idea.
"[..] It feels a little like a solution in search of a problem. [..]"
Come on, text-based chats are more than enough
for easy real-time communication. If you want
something fancy use a Webcam-chat or video-conferencing instead.
"IMVU gives you the sense that you are in the presence of the person you are chatting with,"
Wow, that sucks. Now I'm not going to put any family members in my buddy list.
With recently discovered security holes in JPEG imaging and perhaps other graphics libraries, graphical chat doesn't necessarily sound like a step forward ...
Crystal90210: OMG!!!1 dont chat with CuteA0Lb0y!!!!1
my sister did and now she's pwned!!!!1
FLAgrrl: LOL!!!!1
Honestly, not only has this been done before with other chat clients (didn't Microsoft have a failed attempt), but what's the point? Who would actually use this? When I use AIM I specifically disable smilies and such because they're annoying... why would I now want disembodied aliens on my intarweb screen? AIM having those "themed" IM windows in 5.0 was a terrible idea. They just keep adding more crap into their client, kind of how they ruined ICQ.
If you say "here goes my karma" I will bite you!!!
should include more animation.
/goatse.cx command and your avatar ... er, won't go there.
Nothing funnier than having your friend make fun of you and you execute the
I am
Basically graphical chatrooms, or graphical IM, have been around for a while, in different guises.
However, will it actually add to the user experience? Will it improve comprehension and communication?
I herefore provide prior art for a system that will take readings frmo a human and transform them into human readable signs in a virtual avatar on a computer.
IE, you can smile, and you avatar will smile, you can get angry, and you avatar will become flustered also.
Hey there you go, might not be enough, but when these little things hit me, I just like to chisel down those 3000 patents to 2999.
maybe shareyourgoodidea.org should be created where all good ideas are copylefted and recorded with prior art and defended.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
My main problem concerning buddy icons and avatars and such is that the selections are simply too limited. I mean, sure, there's a few thousand to pick from, and even categorized, but still finding something that seems to fit me just doesn't happen. I imagine this will be far worse with a 3D avatar based system, since the selection will be much larger, and it just won't be possible for the average person to make their own (like they currently do with animated GIFs and such).
Also, it mentions charging for the service. I personally wouldn't not pay any amount, not even a few pesos a month, for such a service. Instant Messaging is just not something I associate with fees, like web page browsing, or IRC. Besides, if it becomes popular, someone will make a free version of it, or if everyone else thinks it costs too much, it will die a quick death.
It will take some real work to pull this off, but gratz if they do.
The speed of time is one second per second.
A system where you could talk to anyone else in the world, in real-time, by simply entering the person's ID into a device. I'd definitely use that!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Does anyone else use Yahoo! Messenger? :p They've had an avatar system for a while now (previous to AIM's SuperBuddy icons), and it's fairly nice if a tad limited in choices. Check out avatars.yahoo.com (ie only, lazy ass yahoo coders). The avatars have multiple facial expressions each, and they react to emoticons used in chat.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
I thought there was already a similar software doing the same thing a few years ago... I think it was called The Palace. Probably someone already mentioned that.
Remi
Home sweet localhost.
Wake me when the avatar responds based on your facial expressions and body language.
Not a bad idea, given the missing aspects from text/emoticon communication, but too half-way house.
fortune -o
When my mom and dad were kids, they worked on the farm. (29 hours a day, etc, etc) But they played with nearby kids.
When I was a kid, I mostly played with nearby kids, but my parents drove me to a few friends' houses. (and vice versa)
My kids played with a few neighborhood kids, but mostly we drove them to friends' houses. (and vice versa)
Do you see a trend here?
In the old days, we adapted and adjusted to the people around us. We are progressing toward simply finding people like us, so we don't have to adapt and adjust. The widespread availability of the car was probably a driving factor in this. But even as we are more choosey about our friends, we have to retain the same set of acquaintances, because there are after all the limitations of the physical world.
Now add the Internet. It makes it more possible than ever to withdraw from the real world. To some extent, it even allows you to minimize interactions with real-world acquaintences. Now we can pick our friends AND, to a good extent, our actuaintances. Or at least, the Internet allows us to manipulate our focus more easily, ignoring or bashing those who do not fit our world-view.
I would submit that our interpersonal skills are atrophying as a result, and that one place it becomes evident is the current election cycle. When you pick your friends and acquaintances, it becomes easier to turn the world into "us" and "them," and that seems to be what the world has been about, the past few years.
*****
Virtual Universe? I don't WANT a virtual universe that looks just like the one I'm in. A brisk walk in the real universe at least gives me a little cardiovascular exercise and stimulates my other senses. The only thing that really interests me in the virtual universe would be places I can't go, for reasons of money, time, or accessability, or places that just don't or can't exist.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Am I the only person who hides the buddy icons and who turns off the ability for other people to set fonts for me to see?
I see IM as a vital means of information exchange. I don't need to see someone's AIM "expression" or "super duper 3d buddy icon".
Why can't text based communication just be text based(information based)? That's why I liked irc before mIRC decided to allow color codes.
_ and ! should be enough for anybody. -- me
Chris
You're right, this is where it falls down. I collect a bunch of emotes, then I find I want to express wry exaperation. None of them are quite right... so I find myself wishing I had one, searching for it forever, not using it ever again.
What I've discovered is that if you install a Messenger Plus Handwriting plugin, everything changes. If I want a different expresison I just draw it. If I'm trying to show how I set something up, I draw it.
Admittedly I'm an illustrator... I spend more time drawing every day than I do talking. You don't have to be professionally trained to draw cute smiling faces. Most people have trained for hours in boring meetings.
I think this is where microsoft is really missing the boat on their Tablet PC system. My MSN plugin is error-prone because it's not supported by the OS. I have a wacom tablet, but I can't buy the Tablet OS because Microsoft invented a fictional market of brilliant young businesspeople rushing about and jotting cocktail napkin ideas worth a million dollars to each other. They locked the OS to licensed tablets and pitched to that market, so I'm stuck.
As usual, a marketing concept has crushed a real possibility. Writing isn't a very good way to conduct business, but drawing is a great way to get a feeling across to someone who isn't there. My friends have picked up on it and draw back to me... they're not all artists, but they do alright. Many people spend their time on PaintChat for this reason, but only the ones who can wander through the labyrinth of the various incomplete English translations and bizarre server rules.
The graphical experience is definitely missing from chat. 3-D is just a silly way to go about it.
Just forget the rancid way people behave on IM for a minute... This graphical chat thing is just absolute garbage! ...Google perhaps?
If anyone has been around for a while you may remember back when Instant Messaging was functional and innovative- nowadays it seems development by these big companies has stagnated-- and these are the new features? 3D heads floating in space??
The only cure for IM is to allow interoperability between clients, this would allow for greater competition-- because as it stands now people are stuck with whoever has a monopoly on IM in their country- AIM in most of the U.S. and MSN Messenger everywhere else...
Could someone (or some company) save IM!?
Emoticons and animated "emotions" inherently make people less able to convey their actual emotions. If you just use the best approximation out of a collection of pictures or animations to express yourself, you are limiting yourself much more. With words, you can say something that has never been said before to describe precisely what you're feeling. I don't see pictures doing that. While people who know you closely might be able to make correct inferences about your state of mind based on your use of these icons, the redundancy caused by everyone else in the world using them too makes this difficult for people who don't know you as well. Also, if the animations are actually supposed to be important in the context, the program is demanding a lot more of your attention, which would make many of us more reluctant to use it.
The Palace did this back in 1994. They key difference between The Palace and this new IMVU, is that The Palace uses 2D avatars, where as IMVU brings in 3D.