Google Lively was a web-based virtual environment

Virtual world

A virtual world is an online community that takes the form of a computer-based simulated environment through which users can interact with one another and use and create objects. The term has become largely synonymous with interactive 3D virtual environments, where the users take the form of...

 produced by Google Inc.

Google

Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

. It was discontinued on December 31, 2008.

Lively was only supported on Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer

Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...

 or Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. , Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web browsers...

, using Windows XP

Windows XP

Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...

 or Windows Vista

Windows Vista

Windows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...

. It required a special download as well as Flash

Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...

. The program was designed to be integrated with the Web

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

 and provided a new way to access information. This was enabled through the embedding of Lively "rooms" into any HTML

HTML

HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....

 webpage—which meant content could be provided in a two-dimensional format, and communication surrounding the topic of that content could be made in the three-dimensional room without the need to enter a separate program.

Engineering manager Niniane Wang supervised this Google project, described in The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

by Brad Stone

Brad Stone (journalist)

Brad Stone is an American journalist and writer. Before moving to Bloomberg , he was a longtime technology correspondent for The New York Times. He also worked at Newsweek...

:

Up to 20 people could occupy a room and chat with one another. (Text appeared as cartoon-style bubbles atop the avatars

Avatar (computing)

In computing, an avatar is the graphical representation of the user or the user's alter ego or character. It may take either a three-dimensional form, as in games or virtual worlds, or a two-dimensional form as an icon in Internet forums and other online communities. It can also refer to a text...

.) Users could design their own virtual environments and hang YouTube

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

 videos and photos from Picasa

Picasa

Picasa is an image organizer and image viewer for organizing and editing digital photos, plus an integrated photo-sharing website, originally created by Idealab in 2002 and owned by Google since 2004. "Picasa" is a blend of the name of Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, the phrase mi casa for "my...

, Google's photo service, on the walls as if they were pieces of art... Students at Arizona State University

Arizona State University

Arizona State University is a public research university located in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area of the State of Arizona...

 tested Lively for several months. Ms. Wang wrote in the blog post that she started Lively as a 20 percent project referring to Google’s philosophy that employees should spend one day a week working on projects outside of their day-to-day responsibilities. Compared to Second Life

Second Life

Second Life is an online virtual world developed by Linden Lab. It was launched on June 23, 2003. A number of free client programs, or Viewers, enable Second Life users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars...

, the virtual world run by Linden Lab

Linden Lab

Linden Research, Inc., d/b/a Linden Lab, is a privately held American Internet company that is best known as the creator of Second Life....

 of San Francisco, the world of Lively is considerably smaller. Also unlike Second Life, in Lively the users could not buy and sell products. Since there was no user-generated content on Lively, items such as hairstyles, clothing and furniture were limited to a catalog of pre-designed selections.

Wang introduced her product July 8, 2008 with this comment:

If you enter a Lively room embedded on your favorite blog or website, you can immediately get a sense of the room creator's interests, just by looking at the furniture and environment they chose. You can also express your own personality by customizing your avatar's look, showing people who you are without having to say a word. Of course, you can chat with each other, and you can also interact through animated actions.

Gadgets in Lively rooms could also run on a user's desktop through Google Desktop

Google Desktop

Google Desktop is desktop search software made by Google for Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows. The program allows text searches of a user's e-mails, computer files, music, photos, chats, Web pages viewed, and other "Google Gadgets"....

.

External links

• Lively official site
• Art/Animation Direction/Implementation completed by X-Ray Kid Studios
• Ars Technica: "Hands On"
• Massively hands-on with Lively
• RCE Universe Lively Discussion Site
• Home Builder using Lively
• Lively No More at About Instant Messengers