Video vs. Virtual

Read a fantastic post this morning about videoconferencing and virtual worlds – which is better for education? Seems virtual is. (surprise, surprise)

This blog post from Campus Technology talks about Sun’s Project Wonderland and the Media Grid. I was in Boston in January for a summit about the Media Grid and posted about that initiative at the time.  It’s a great project and certainly has some exciting potential for education in the coming years.

It’s certainly not time for everyone to abandon all other virtual worlds and run to Project Wonderland and the Media Grid, but it’s exciting to think about what changes lie in the future and how virtual worlds will really start to shape how we learn, interact, and build communities.  With Vivaty’s public beta, Google’s “Lively”, and the announcement that avatars were able to move from one virtual world (Second Life) into another (Open Sim), this is a crazy exciting week for people working with virtual worlds.  So glad to be part of it.

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.