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Google Launches Lively, an Avatar Based 3D World
no.good.at.coding writes "Google has launched a Windows-only, in-browser (you need to install a client first, though) 3D avatar world — Lively — that you can embed in websites and use to interact with other people. It's not as expansive as Second Life yet, but expect things to get better."
What's next, a program to install animated smileys to your Outlook e-mails?
Random rants about technology: http://technorants.blogspot.com
According to their track record, Google scaled reasonably well.
expect things to get better.
Like running on multiple platforms? Having a userbase that isn't all newbs checking it out for a couple minutes? Having suggestions on what to _do_ with it that can benefit meatspace unlike other 3d worlds?
Yes, many people are into what you call "make-believe" and what other people call fantasy or fiction. It's inherent to human nature. Novels, movies, games and comics are all 'make-believe': creating a fantasy world. The next logical step is to make such a fantasy world shared between more people. This is what a 'game' like SL or Lively does.
I don't give a shit anymore. I'm glad that somebody was interested enough to do this, and that other people find it interesting, but I will be staying away. My workplace, which fancies itself as hip and smart, will probably make this mandatory, like they have with Facebook, which will simply be another pointless drain on my otherwise interesting day. Bah humbug!
If more companies built stores in SL and sold real goods through it,
holy crap why? I can buy what I want from a good old 2D website faster than some half assed second life store that is impossible to navigate or get any real info about what I am buying.
Last thing I want is to go to a "virtual" dell store and wander around, I want to find the server, click on the options and click on buy.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
In all seriousness, why on Earth would I want to use the Second Life client to do what you recommend? We already have the World Wide Web and it works quite well for those things. "The same thing, but harder to use" isn't going to be much of a selling point.
That's such a delusion. People you talk to online are not anything like what you think of them. You're not interacting with a person, you're interacting with your own imagination, seeded with a few select facts or fictions from someone else.
do you think the people you talk with in offline (real) life, are the way they are, the way they talk with you ? how many people you have met in your entire life, that were just as they seemed to be, after you got to know him ?
in 'real' life you subject people to the test of time to know them better. only after some time, you can get to know someone. continuous exposure in a mutual environment eventually makes who they really are to come out.
this rule doesnt change in the real world. if there is someone that believes someone whom s/he knows from online communities for just 1-2 months is the way s/he is, you can easily say that that person is naive.
because same goes for online environments. its infallible. constant mutual online activity with a person eventually makes who they are to come out.
If you really do feel connected to people you meet online, then you're actually not connected to anyone, and you're creating imaginary friends, like someone in a sensory deprivation chamber having lucid dreams.
excuse me, but you already are in a deprivation chamber. everyone is. each conscious mind is a deprivation chamber, and the deprivation is only remedied by the extent of usage of sensory organs and interaction with the environment.
by definition, you use the same organs while seeing a bloke and sending voice signals to him on a street corner, and while video chatting with someone on the internet. there is no difference in technical terms.
each interaction produces impulses to your brain through your sensory organs, and invokes certain thoughts and emotions. and those thoughts and emotions are real. they do not differentiate between laughing to a joke told in a pub or a joke told online.
again, time is the only defining factor for personality of any person. nothing else. a person you know from 'real' life is no different than any person you know from online, until they persist through the test of time. and time passes in equal pace both online and offline. sometimes even faster online, as there is more interaction in online world due to the ease of use.
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I am not interested in any virtual 3d world that isn't decentralized, meaning that anyone can set up their own server with their own rules, with the ability to easily and seemlessly travel between servers. Something like a 3d version of the www.
I second that 100%. A 3D-equivalent of the WWW would perhaps have many advantages (as usual, it is hard to imagine how we would really use it), but it needs to be as open as the WWW to be of any real use. So there needs to be an interoperable standard for avatars, and a standard protocol for your "browser" to interact with any 3d server. Why would I, as a company, invest in an online store inside second life, which is an environment over which I have 0 control, where some other company has the power to print money?
... because right now they're terrible.
I'm honestly surprised; Google's previous beta rollouts have, to my memory, been a lot more functional at first unveiling. This new system is seriously broken... I can't put more than one person in a room (no idea why, as others seem to have no trouble), it's slow, it's limited, and it has serious user interface design issues.
Google will have to move fast if they want to compete in this space. There are, quite frankly, too many options for social interactive chat right now; the only thing Google has going for it in this market is name recognition.
Take care,
Mark
There is a solution...
I think it's something else. There is something that makes certain people hate things that other people love if the first group sees the love as unreasonable.
I've seen groups of people with an unfounded hate for iPhones, VWs, Google, cell phones, text messaging, social websites, instant messaging, ...
So honestly, I think there is just a blind reactionary backlash when some people don't understand why a product, service, company or concept has "Fanboys".
I try to avoid both sides, but I admit that in the 70's-80's I felt a little irrational hate for VWs now and then (even though I've owned more than one). If you're talking this century I've got a hell of a lot of love for Google, and lately I get a little warm fuzzy for Apple every now and then--but I try to be realistic and criticize them as much as praise (something fanboys seem completely incapable of doing--I think that would be the definition of a "Fanboy", the inability to seriously criticize the target of your infatuation).