Google Lively - 3D Chat/Virtual World

As if Google wasn’t already trying to be the know-it-all and the have-it-all of the Web, now they also try to compete with 3D chat rooms and virtual worlds in this new release in beta phase:

Lively - “Chat and interact with your friends in rooms you design.”

“Customize your avatar and stream personal photos and video.”

“Invite your friends to chat and help decorate.”

The look an feel resembles virtual worlds such as CyWorld, for instance. Many others are compared on this chart by TechCrunch. The Blue Book published by the Association of Virtual Worlds contains and enormous list of Virtual Worlds…

It might be worth giving it a try. I am just not sure whether we need yet another virtual world combined with a chat room capability… mmmm… All in all, It might be just another move for Google to place their ads all over the Web , this time on the 3D Web…

By the way, no Mac version as of now…

Also, take a look at Karl Kapp’s list of Alternative to Second Life.

Sun Microsystem’s Project Wonderland and The Immersive Education Grid

The Media Grid Immersive Education Initiative led by Aaron Walsh from the Boston University has been on the cutting edge of virtual environments experiments for a learning purpose. They hold constant meetings in Second Life, have been experimenting with different virtual worlds and not was Wonderland’ turn for a more “official” educational event run by the Immersive Education participants. 

I’m pasting some of the thoughts fellow bloggers have had on their posts about the event:

 

 

First Educational Gathering in Wonderland

By timwang

(…) over 60 avatars gathered on the Sun’s island in Secondlife, cuing up to get a “ticket” for the first experimentation of the Wonderland Project by Sun’s Microsystems. The event was organized by the MediaGrid which is a computational grid platform that promotes 3D virtual learning environment. (…)”

On Tim Wang’s eLearning Blog 

 

Wonderland Works!

By Katherine W. Prawl:

“Friday was a red-letter day. I attended an event in Second Life for an education group, hosted by Sun Microsystems, which was intended to introduce the group members toProject Wonderland. Especially exciting was the fact that Sun and its partners (which include NMC) are exploring the possibility of allowing avatars to navigate from theEducation Grid running on Wonderland servers.”

On the NewMedia On the Go blog

 

Sun’s Wonderland & Education Grid Demo

by Chris Collins

“Today the Media Grid Immersive Education Initiative launched the Education Grid onSun’s Wonderland platform.

Aaron Walsh from Media Grid launched the initiative from within Second Life and the island quickly filled up with many more avatars waiting to get in to join the demonstration.”

Fleep’s Deep Thoughts blog

 

Association of Virtual Worlds’ Resources

The Association of Virtual Worlds is a new initiative that focuses on Virtual Worlds research and also works like an interest group. They have created a community on Ning to facilitate interaction amongst those who share interest in MUVEs.

They have some very good material about their main object of interest, including these ebooks that are free to download:

The Green Book: A Business Guide to Virtual Worlds
The Blue Book: A Consumer Guide to Virtual Worlds

These can be found in their Publishing Division website and also in their Ning community.

Long lists, so… enjoy the read/navigation…

Sun Microsystem’s Project Wonderland’s Security Levels

In this blog post Nicole invites Timothy Wright, a Ph.D. candidate from University of Notre Dame, to write a post about his research interest in Project Wonderland and Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) from a security and data storage perspective.

His research project has driven him to come up with different “privileges” and status for users which dictates what files, objects and places they can see and/or modify.

This brings much more relief for companies and academic institutions that plan on adopting Virtual Worlds for learning and collaboration but are worried about data security.

Like Wright says, the advantage of Wonderland over other Virtual Worlds is the fact that it is in its early stages and already considering these issues, which means that these types of functionality will be built in the program and not “around it” once it is already built, which is the case with most Virtual Worlds out there (if they even consider such issues at all.

Nice read.

VirtuED - Using Wonderland to Promote Learning

This is a great project and here is a post on their efforts to establish Wonderland as a learning tool.

Keep up the good work guys!

How NOT to teach in Second Life

An interesting interview with Milosun Czervik on the use of Second Life for teaching and how most people just replicate flawed real-life environments and approaches when using MUVEs for learning.
Interview conducted by Kevin Lim.

Handipoints - Virtual World that Helps Kids Do Chores in Real World

Speaking of persuasion power, Handipoints is a clever idea of getting kids’ interest in video games and virtual worlds to get them to do something productive in real life through an “incentive program”.

I will not go on an on about how interesting this idea is since Michael Arrington from Techcrunch already wrote a nice post about it here.

Immersive Education - Education Grid Initiative

An interview with Aaron Walsh, professor of virtual environments and games for learning at Boston University: