Unleashing my (imagined) creativity, I interior-designed my own coffee lounge as a cozy space for online friends and colleagues. The lounge is a 3D chatroom in Google's Lively, just one of many virtual rooms created by Google users.
I enjoyed doing the interiors - rearranging sofas and coffee tables, hanging picture frames with my real-life landscape photos, attaching a video screen with streaming video of an MTV (Music Television) from YouTube, its music providing a relaxing mood in my coffee lounge.
Lively is a fun way to chat online. My avatar-self, together with my online friends' own avatars, can move around the 3D chatroom. Avatar gestures beat smileys and emoticons in exagerated ways. Laugh and cry go with the proper sounds, with face contortions and arms flailing in an amusing manner. Roll on the floor laughing (rofl) becomes literal. It is always pleasing to see your friend's avatar jump up and down to show she's happy.
It is still in its testing phase (beta), but it is more stable now than when it first came out early July 2008. To see what Google is doing to address user problems, see this post on Q&A with a Google Lively Experience designer.
If you want to check out a 3D chatroom, you can visit my coffee lounge, called The Kape Shop. My tip: move around the 3D chatroom by mouse click-dragging your avatar or just clicking on any spot in the room. Catch me online; virtual-me is the avatar named melailah (as in me-jane, you-tarzan). See you there!
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