Google Lively 3d live Chat rooms hit the spot

Lively Website

I have tried out quite a few chat rooms over the years from plain text to isometric and some 3d ones. With the exception of the text based systems, none of the alternative chat systems seemed to be easy to use.

Most of the chat systems I looked at always seemed too fiddly or slow, or full of 'yoof' who skipped  English lessons. I have also tried Second Life and tried to like it but it is just full of morons, to be quite frank. I don't want to be discover my inner 'furry' or some hidden transexual...no comments please. I don't want to be a shop keeper who hangs around all day waiting for some one to virtually buy something. Honestly, the first time I tried second life someone appeared and tried to sell me stuff. I asked him about it and seriously that is what he spent his Saturdays doing. Oh and I certainly don't want to get involved in virtual sex. Honestly for those who have never tried it, real sex is great and you can burn calories.

One thing Second Life has going for it is it's economy which you can make real money and it's level of customisation. You can make your own objects and clothes inside Second Life. Can't fault that.

So why am I writing about Google's Lively? Well so far personally this has to be the best I have used in terms of practicality. It just works. Admittedly it is beta and has a few flaws. The one thing I liked the most is you create your own rooms and that's it. There is no world as such. Just you and your room. You can add objects to the room to make it more interesting. Things like tables, chairs and lamps can be put down and moved around. You can also add projectors and TV's which can stream YouTube movies live. Excellent. Also you can hang picture frames and link to external images, such as Picassa. I linked to my Flickr gallery though.

Currently it's not possible to create you own content and rooms but that is something planned for the future. From what I can tell you will be able to use Google's SketchUp to design a room. This is quite handy as it's easy to use. Content will be able to be created from a variety of 3D applications.

From a chat point of view it is pretty good. What made me laugh a lot when I invited a friend into my newly built room was the ability to interact with another Avatar. For instance punching and kicking or holding hands and patting on the back. Brilliant. The text appears as bubbles above the head of the avatars. This is ok but I found it a little awkward to see when the side bar was open and trying to move my avatar around to see them. Having said that Avatar control is simple. You can double click on a space and your avatar just appears there. No messing around walking to the spot

What's more interesting about Lively is that rooms have been designed to be embedded into a website. This means you can have your own personal space, my test room is below. In order to enter a room you will need to install a small plugin for your browser but shouldn't take more than a minute. Each room has it's own url and I believe it's possible to make objects in a room a link to another room so you can build up a network of rooms. By making it more personal for me has made it more useful and fun. I can invite my friends to my own space instead of turning up in one giant venue. Having said that there are plenty of public rooms available on Lively's website. There are plenty of cafes and bars for example.

Another great touch is the use of emoticons and IRC style / commands. For instance typing ";-)" makes your avatar wink, ":-P" sticks tongue out, typing LOL and your avatar laughs, ROTFL and your avatar rolls on the floor laughing. To quickly use animations you can type it's name. For example typing /wave, /bow, /flirt will make your character perform those actions. Absolutely brilliant.

So as you can tell I am quite excited by it. But what's in it for Google? Well if you read all the above then you will notice how many Google products I mentioned. All this personal information being in the hands of one company could be slightly worrying. How much you trust Google is a matter of personal taste but linking all these products in and you can't help thinking 'How cool!'.