Ding Dong! Flower Delivery!

I arrived home today to find a large box on my front porch. When I realized it was a flower delivery, my mind raced trying to figure out who on earth would send me flowers. My husband’s a fabulous man, but his flowers generally are delivered in person so chances were good that it wasn’t him.

Who was it? Let’s watch this video and find out:

Oh yes my friends. I received flowers from Twinity. To congratulate me on the purchase of my new apartment. My VIRTUAL apartment. In Twinity. Dear God, that is brilliant. BRILLIANT.

I am loving the “crossover” that I’m seeing more and more between virtual environments and offline marketing. First I saw Circuit City with their iPod Nano giveaway (find it in SL, get one in RL) and now a ‘real life’ gesture perfectly normal for a house-warming being used on a virtual home purchase as well. I really love that idea. I think that we’re seeing a lot more instances of the mixing of online and offline communities, merchandise and marketing. Maybe people are finally starting to understand that all of our online relationships, experiences and communities truly do have a ‘real’ component.

Good job, Twinity. I’m impressed.

Big Day for Virtual Worlds

Today was a big day for virtual worlds.

* IBM and Second Life have managed to figure out how to have an avatar move from Second Life to Open Sim.

* Vivaty announces public beta with Facebook and AIM

* Google announces their own virtual world, Lively.

These are all pretty big things.  Interoperability is something that’s been discussed for a while now and the idea of allowing avatars to move freely from one virtual world to another is a pretty sweet thing.  With as scattered as I feel in the social media realm these days, the ability to have just one avatar, one identity, that’s able to move around .. makes me happy.

Vivaty and Lively are virtual worlds that are web-based and they both allow you to create your own ’scenes’ and interact with others. There’s a lot of customization in both – you can change how your room looks, move furniture around, pick new clothes/hair for your avatar.  Vivaty works with Facebook and AIM and Lively is its own thing that you can embed in your own website.  Both very cool, both with a lot of potential.

I don’t see myself using either Vivaty or Lively much right now for a few reasons. The main reason is that both are PC-only at this point and I spend most of my ‘free time’ on my Mac. I’m sure it’s being worked on and I sure hope so.  The PC only stuff makes me cranky.  If we can get people to move from one virtual world to another, surely we can get these things to work on a Mac.

Vivaty, AIM, and a public beta

I got an email yesterday from Vivaty letting me in on the news that they’ll be moving to public beta and that Vivaty will now also with with AIM.

I posted previously about Vivaty and the potential I think it has. It’s a cool little virtual scene environment that’s all web-based and for that alone, I think it’s a good thing. TechCrunch has a great post about Vivaty and this news so you can pop over there and read the whole thing.

One thing that I’ve been thinking about, however, is how useful this might be in AIM.  I use AIM a lot for work and to connect quickly with co-workers and friends. It’s a small little program that provides a fast, easy way to get answers.  Now, if Vivaty works with AIM is that something that would make AIM better for me? Personally, I doubt it.  I’m using AIM *because* it’s fast, easy and gets me what I need.  Vivaty is great, truly.. and I think it’s a good tool, but for me.. Vivaty and AIM are not a good match.

I’m also not one of those Facebook “chat” people. Facebook is fantastic and I certainly do have a Facebook profile, but for me.. that’s all Facebook is. I’m not using Facebook to chat, or play games, or interact with the community in general. I know a boatload of people *are* using Facebook for those things and I think that’s great. Do your thing.. I’m just not.

So, that being said.. I think it’s neat that Vivaty is in public beta and people can now add it to their Facebook and AIM and make your own scene and connect there. Good on ya, Vivaty.

Vivaty and Possibilities

A few weeks ago I received an email asking me if I would be interested in trying out a new tool/technology called Vivaty.  I did a quick twitter poll asking if anyone knew anything about Vivaty to which NO ONE responded (Seriously people.. what the heck). So that told me that either no one knew anything about Vivaty, or no one felt like telling me about it so I figured I was on my own and I’d give it a whirl just to see what it was about.

This past week I was able to take part in a conference call and demonstration with Keith McCurdy, the President and CEO of Vivaty, and I gotta say.. I think this has potential. Keith introduced himself by saying that he worked previously for Electronic Arts and had developed Vivaty as a platform and wanted to get my impressions.  We used WebEx so Keith was able to walk me through some “scenes” and show me what you’re able to do while we discussed it.

In a nutshell, from my point of view, Vivaty allows you to log into a ’scene’ which is your own personal virtual environment. You have an avatar that you create with very simple choices.. not great amounts of avatar customization right up front but in my opinion.. that’s a good thing. Sometimes that stuff can be a little (a lot?) overwhelming at first. So anyway.. you log into your ’scene’ and you’re able to invite others to come join you. The scene that Keith showed me was sort of a patio area with a pool and some outdoor furniture but apparently there are/will be many others to choose from as well.  As we were hanging out at Keith’s pool he showed me how users can move objects/furniture around to customize their area and make it more unique.  It felt to me very much like a Second Life environment, but with one difference.. it’s web-based. No intensive graphic requirements, no huge processor, no leaving people out because they don’t have a powerful graphics card capable of running it.. very nice.

Another fantastic thing Vivaty can do is take YouTube URLs and allow them to be embedded in the scene and viewed by anyone that’s present in that area. There were also photos on the wall that were brought in from a Flickr RSS feed.  Vivaty is almost like a big mash-up of web content in a fantastically neat virtual package.

Vivaty is currently in beta and being used in Facebook. I’ve been invited and if any of my readers are interested, I do have some other beta invites that I can toss your way and get you included.. PC only at this point, it seems. I was a little disappointed with that because I do prefer my mac, but it’s not a deal-breaker.

Vivaty Pros:
Web-based
Immersive
Customizable
Can pull web-content from other sites into environment (YouTube, Flickr, etc)
No risk of ugly, inappropriate ’scenes’ to interfere with your space
Seems to be very user-friendly and easy to understand/navigate
More control over your environment/space

Vivaty Cons:
Still in beta
Other than the discussion with me, there was no real consideration about educational uses, but in all fairness, they did say that these were things they hadn’t thought about, but would now consider.

From my perspective, Vivaty has a lot going for it. If you can restrict your logins to a specific group (or class) you can easily have a defined, secure, virtual environment that’s community-based where groups of people can meet, discuss and view web-content together. If we were able to use a tool like this within ANGEL, for instance, allowing each online class to have their own virtual room where the entire class could meet I can see a lot of potential there for some really wonderful interactions.

I’m pleased to have been asked to provide some input and check things out and I’m looking forward to playing around with Vivaty.  I’m hopeful that they’ll keep educational institutions in mind as they progress forward and I can’t wait to see what opportunities this will present.  A big thank you to Raksha, Keith and Heidi.

Good vs. Bad

A discussion took place yesterday on the Second Life Educator’s mailing list that quickly turned into a fairly heated argument with each side stating their positions. I truly got to the point where I just didn’t even read the emails anymore and deleted them immediately upon their arrival in my inbox.

The discussion began when a fairly new educator to Second Life asked how she might go about giving her students a quiz in-world.  Someone responded back to her fairly quickly in what was, in my opinion, a judgmental tone asking why she’d want to do that in Second Life vs. just on the web.  He talked about the use of the virtual space and how we should really just use the best tool for the job and maybe that’s the web instead of Second Life if you’re wanting to give a quiz.

In response, another educator called him out on that and referred to several comments he’d made before about these same things and who was he to judge what would be best?

Fast forward about 4 hours and about 30 emails later with an awful lot of unnecessary back-and-forth and now I’m deleting emails on the subject.

I see the point that it really is important to use the best tool for the job and maybe that means that giving a quiz inside Second Life is not the ‘best’ way to do something. However, things like Sloodle (from what I understand) were developed for this purpose. Believe me, I’m all about using the best tool for the job and I’m a firm believer in the fact that what might be the best thing for me to use, might very well NOT be the best tool for you.  That being said, I also completely value the immersiveness of Second Life and virtual worlds and if we’re teaching students in that environment, then I think that sometimes it’s also beneficial to assess their learning in the same space without removing them and testing them on the web.

My frustration with the discussion stems from this – Why are we so quick to judge and tell people what they should be doing because *we* think that’s the best way. Why are we not recognizing that every person has different methods and goals they want to accomplish and why are we not helping them, unconditionally, to reach those goals?

September and Virtual Worlds

The first week of September is shaping up to be a really interesting and exciting time.  Not only is the Second Life Community Convention being held from September 5-7 in Tampa, FL with a track dedicated to education, but the Virtual Worlds Conference being held in Los Angeles, CA on September 3,4 is also now featuring education as one of the focuses.

It’ll be a busy week with some pretty fantastic ideas, inspiration and connections. I can’t wait.

Indispensable

I just read a blog post that I saw posted on twitter related to Second Life and businesses. The article refers to McKinsey & Company (a managment consulting firm) and how they are saying that companies and businesses that are not engaging in the use of virtual worlds are doing so ‘at their own peril’.

I found this section of the article really interesting:

“The next phase of Second Life’s development, analysts said, would involve businesses developing very specific 3D applications, which for instance would enable them to conduct virtual meetings, saving on transport costs, and to undertake advanced staff training.

Trucking companies, for instance, are teaching drivers how to parallel park their vehicles using simulations built in Second Life; Hilton, the hotel chain, is collaborating on a tool to train receptionists in virtual lobbies, and energy giants are developing applications that can help them to train staff on how to deal with a hostage situation on an oil rig.”

For me, that’s the difference that virtual worlds bring to the table. It’s experiential. You *do* things there. I had someone tell me in a meeting one day that he’d “rather look at a real photograph than look at that same thing built in Second Life”, because it seemed “fake” to him. I understand what he’s trying to say, and nothing in a virtual world will ever be truly exactly as it is in RL (at least not for the foreseeable future) and so perhaps to some folks it can feel like we’re not being honest or truthful in what we’re representing in a virtual space. The ability, however, to *experience* these spaces is what makes it so powerful. Looking at a photo of a dorm room, for instance, is much different than having your avatar walk into that room and experience the space. That experience, in my opinion, actually IS more real than looking at a photo of the space.

For people not aware of or using virtual worlds to conduct business, meet and socialize with other people, or as a creative outlet, then perhaps these environments do seem ‘false’, but for those of us actively using the space it’s incredibly real.

My avatar needs a virtual passport

With the launch of Sun’s Project Wonderland toolkit, and my recent trip to Boston for the Digital Media Summit on Immersive Education, I’m realizing that my avatar is going to need a way to move easily between virtual environments – she needs a passport.

There’s been discussion of this recently – of ways to allow your avatar and identity to move with you through the different virtual environments and I for one, applaud this. Micala should be able to live in SL or WoW, or Kaneva, or There, or Project Wonderland, or wherever else she wants to be. Just like I have a specific email address, I should have a specific “passport” ID that allows me portability between these worlds.

There are a lot of VW’s out there now.. and it’s really just “getting started”. Think about what we’ll have in five or ten years. I fully believe that there will never be “ONE” virtual world that we all log into to do every single thing we need to do online, so we need ways to move around easily.

Plus my avatar’s passport photo would look a MILLION times better than my real passport photos have *ever* looked.