The vBusiness Expo launches tomorrow. Sitting here at my keyboard tonight I was tempted, once again, into thinking about how bleeding edge what we were attempting was. A large congregation of people, using custom software, to meet each other in a way that very nearly approximates the physical in its benefits, and in some ways exceeds them. We are glimpsing the future, not by making guesses about where things are going or by running projections, but by finding people who are doing the things we expect will be commonplace someday down the road. We are, in a sense, touching the future.
It’s all heady stuff but you know, when I see something like this, it feels like a drop in the bucket:
http://www.ted.com At the 2007 EG conference, Kevin Kelly shares a fun stat: The World Wide Web, as we know it, is only 5,000 days old. Now, Kelly asks, how can we predict what’s coming in the next 5,000 days?
This five-star video will blow your mind, despite it being a dusty old 2005 fossilized account of technology.
Clay Shirky: Institutions vs. collaboration – http://www.ted.com In this prescient 2005 talk, Clay Shirky shows how closed groups and companies will give way to looser networks where small contributors have big roles and fluid cooperation replaces rigid planning.
I had a lot of fun finding articles and blog entries desperate for excuses as to why Lively is no good. Many of them seemed to only have logged in to research their “Google’s latest sucks because I’m so brilliant” article. It was hillariously tragic.
After spending an entire day in Lively yesterday, I’ve decided something: anyone claiming to be a virtual worlds expert that doesn’t think Lively is going to rule has no idea what they’re talking about. If you haven’t already, click on the picture below to download the client or log into the meeting space I made earlier.
3 Bad Things
It’s cartoony. It’s low-res with no real physics engine. This means you won’t be recreating the perfect golf simulator here – but it also means fantastic framerates, low bandwidth, and no probability of falling off of something.
You can’t create content. Yet. They’ve stated that it will be opened up soon, but that part wasn’t ready for launch. Instead you have to use the pre-fab stuff and assemble it all like a dollhouse… well, a dollhouse that can play video, audio, can display web-hosted pictures, and make anything clickable. Of course, it will accept custom content… and when it does, look out. Google Sketchup + 3D warehouse = more free customizable content than you can imagine.
It’s not a world. Instead, it’s individual rooms. You can get from one room to another via regular http link, and you can make anything clickable to facilitate that, but the rooms themselves aren’t “joined”. If you really feel a dire need to look out a window and see people pass by, that’s a problem. Of course, you CAN be in as many rooms as you want all at once with a single account and avatar.
5 Good Things
It’s easy. I mean really, really easy. If you can click-drag, you can do everything. My eight year old daughter was making rooms and interacting in no time.
It’s fast. I mean really, really fast. Rooms load up from scratch in just a few moments, and even on our very old busted up laptop we get fantastic framerates.
It handles overload. Most platforms die a horrible death when you overload them. Lively just makes new people who enter the room over the limit “observers” without avatars.
It actually works. Face it: most platforms launch broken. While there are still bugs to squash, the fact that it actually works with 20 people in the room at once is amazing. Just imagine what it will do in a year.
It’s Google. Remember how Google Reader launched, and everybody thought it was just idiotic compared to Bloglines? Google kept fixing it, improving it, making it easier, faster better… you have to be die-hard to stick with Bloglines now. Imagine what they’re going to roll out next with Lively. It already integrates with the web, and Google has a history of integrating everything they do. Think about the services they already own that could be integrated here: GTalk, the Sketchup library, Google Documents… they’ve already done some rudimentary integration of YouTube and Picasa.
1 Conclusion
This is it; the big show in virtual worlds. Never mind Second Life, it has its applications for the time being, but it isn’t the future. Log into Lively now.
Twinity has been really coming along lately. They’ve just opened up a virtual replication of the Hackescher Markt area in Berlin, and plan on rolling out even more of the city in the coming weeks and months. The private beta test group (which is easy to join, by the way) now gets to visit galleries in Berlin, connect and communicate with other members in cafés, or simply take a look at the city’s sights.
It’s an interesting contrast to the browser-based worlds I’ve been looking at. The detail in Twinity is truly awesome, and it comes with a really robust set of tools. Here are some recent screenshots:
click images for full size
It’s an interesting take on virtual worlds. Officially, the intention is to replicate not just Berlin but many major cities. The graphics are, obviously, gorgeous and highly detailed. It’s crammed full of media tools and an embedded commerce system. You can decorate your own apartment, surf any web content as a group on a wall panel, and all sorts of things.
The only thing that keeps press from calling this the “Second Life killer” is that you don’t build your own buildings from scratch here. It seems like such a small thing, but we’ll see when it comes out of beta if that matters. It might be completely beside the point, or it might be the thing that keeps people from gaining a sense of investment in the platform.
Even after having used Twinity, I still have questions. Is there a case for businesses using it as a work tool? How effective will it be as a marketing tool? Is it the kind of thing we’ll hold vBusiness Expos in, or will lag, high graphic detail and the all around young age of the platform make that impossible?
I think we’ll have a better idea when Berlin is completely built. Meanwhile, if you haven’t already, do sign up for the beta. It’s quite the sight to behold.
Grab a Google login and check this out (sometimes you have to login twice):
This is Lively, Google’s big run at virtual worlds. Click-drag anywhere to change the camera angle, and click-drag on yourself to walk around. Double-click or right click on anything to interact with it, and right-click on yourself for animations.
Check out the YouTube overview:
Lively by Google is a new product available in Google Labs. Create an avatar and chat with your friends in rooms you design.
www.lively.com
You can place furniture and switch avatars, and there’s a built-in marketplace for both. You can make linkable objects, TVs that play from Youtube, and boards that display web-hosted graphics. (And yes, you will be able to create custom 3D content and avatars very shortly – contrary to what some have reported in their haste to hate things people get excited about.)
This could be exactly what we’ve been looking for. I can’t say that for sure… but I suppose the only way to know anything about it is to use it. I’ll stay logged in for the day, see how it goes.
It’s only a matter of time before VOIP is integrated here as it is in GTalk. After that, it’s a few small concurrency issues away from being a total killer for meeting spaces. I mean, it’s no OLIVE, but you never know… Clever Zebra just might do something here one day.
Twinity
