Google’s Niniane Wang said that entering a customized Lively room can give users an immediate “sense of the room creator’s interests, just by looking at the furniture and environment they chose.”  To us, Lively feels more like a chat room with 3-D camera controls, but hey, it’s still early, so we are somewhat excited at the possibility of portable virtual environments for the masses, by the masses.

Visiting Lively rooms requires Windows XP or Vista, Internet Explorer or Firefox, and downloading the Lively browser plug-in.  Mac support is not available, and may not be an option for same time. 

User-created Livelry rooms can be embedded in any Web site.  Visitors can chat within the various rooms and also add/move furniture and other objects.  The appearance of avatars can be modified in some basic ways.  Lively rooms can also display YouTube videos on virtual TVs and display photos (via Picasa) in virtual picture frames.

How does Lively compare to Second Life?  It’s certainly easier to use, but for now, it lacks the latter’s programmability (Second Life has an object oriented scripting language called Linden Scripting Language, or LSL for short.   We’ll keep you updated on how Lively progresses over time.

Moore makes three basic points: (1) Virtual worlds ARE already social networking sites, to some degree; (2) Social networking sites provide profiles and buddy lists for your WHOLE life, not just your virtual one; and (3) On social networking sites you play yourself, while in virtual worlds, you play someone else.  He then explores whether it’s a good idea to combine virtual worlds and social networking sites.

Read the article on Terra Nova.

Could a new virtual environment platform, Metaplace, bring virtual spaces to the masses? Raph Koster, one of the former developers of massively multiplayer online game Ultima Online who quit his job to form a brand new MMO company, thinks so. He recently announced Metaplace, a brand new virtual world venture that promises an open-platform, open-ended approach to virtual worlds. Users of Metaplace (http://www.metaplace.com) will be able to build 3D virtual worlds quickly using simple, sharable building blocks and templates.

The resulting online spaces, which could be used for gaming, e-commerce, or socializing, can be embedded in a webpage, MySpace or Facebook profile or weblog.

“We are out to democratise virtual worlds and bring them to absolutely anybody,” said Mr Koster, founder of Areae, the company that is producing Metaplace. “You can come to the site, press a button and have a functioning virtual world that supports multiple users in about 30 seconds.”

While details are sparse at the moment, all we know is that Metaplace is a very ambitious attempt to go beyond merely building a virtual world. It’s an attempt to build an open virtual world standard. Metaplace claims that the platform will be able to integrate smoothly into current web standards. This means that people should be able to integrate whatever is built in Metaspace into websites, RSS feeders, and more.

Recently featured as one of the top 40 hottest startups at the TechCrunch40 conference, Metaplace is definitely a virtual environment to keep an eye on.

These proceedings serve as a snapshot of the state of education in Second Life as it is today. It includes “exemplar case studies illustrating how institutional issues in establishing Second Life can be overcome and a number of examples showing how the platform is being adapted to support learning in a wide range of fields and with diverse groups of learners.” It is notable that the sciences and arts are both well represented, demonstrating the breadth of interest and content found in the community of educators that use Second Life.

Selected highlights include Global Kids Inc. Best Practices for Using Virtual Worlds for Education, various ways educators have taught nutrition, emergency preparedness training, the environment, creative arts. etc.

Read the Second Life Education Workshop Proceedings here.