Look Out! It’s Google Lively!
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.