Livelyzens do what Google didn't with Google Lively!

In an attempt to sustain the product, Livelyzens (Lively Users) are demonstrating the power of Google Lively - the 3D world that Google has decided to shutdown on December 31st 2008. Today Livelyzens unveiled a concept room called "Babel Miss : Google Translate" which has a TranslatorBot Avatar that translates from english to spanish and viceversa. This feature not only facilitates communication within a multilingual virtual world but also shows the utilty of Google Lively as learning tool. The room was engineered by RandomHuman and built by freecoconuts.

"Put .en or .es on the end of your nick so she knows what you speak, and then she'll attempt to translate everything you say into the other language (Those stand for English and Spanish). Google could build this feature directly into Lively to provide each user with seamless realtime communication with others whose languages they don't speak. I'm sure I don't need to spell out what this would mean for education, for commerce, or for simple friendly communication." said Random explaining how the room worked and intention behind the concept room.

This is by far the most exciting feature on Lively ever since it launched , ironically developed by a lively user in less than 5 days rather than Google in their 2.5 years of developing the product. The Livelyzens plan to unveil other concept rooms in the coming days in a push to make a case to Google about the potential of Google Lively and why this wonderful 3D world should not be shutdown.

See the room for yourself by visiting: http://www.lively.com/dr?rid=7499084429716312257(you would need to sign in using your gmail id and downloading a small lively plugin from Google's www.lively.com).

Visit BabelMiss - Spanish Room (click on image below)

[2008 Press release by www.livelyzens.com. Please use the Contact form on website for any enquiries]

the equivalent of erasing a neighborhood community center

From an article that appeared in The Los Angeles Times Business section (http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lively21-2008nov21,0,7000770.story)

Here's another lesson, courtesy of other virtual worlds that have collapsed in recent years: Turning Lively off come Dec. 31 may not be that easy.

"People in virtual worlds establish a sense of community and belonging" that's difficult to uproot, said Dmitri Williams, assistant professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication. "It would be the equivalent of someone erasing a neighborhood community center. It's bound to ruffle feathers. These are important spaces for people."

Letter to Google

[We are sending this letter to Google in a round about route - the goal is to make as many stops in email boxes/blogs before reaching Google :) ...so please feel free to post this on your blog or forward it on to your friends and them to theirs and so on...]

To
Google Inc.
All over the Internet

Dear GOOGLE GODS,

We fall on our knees and plead to you (visualize Lively /plead animation here) for our impudence of writing to the President of the United States not realizing your omnipotence and might.

In an attempt to avoid your wrath and make peace, we commit to full disclosure of our communication with President Bush (forwarded below), the outgoing President of the United States.

What we fail to understand is why you would decide to destroy a world within 4 months of releasing a beta when you spent 2.5 years building it. We empathize deeply with all the wonderful elves and fairies (a.k.a your developers, testers and contractors) who created Lively one virtual brick at a time to give us this wonderful 3D world.
In all seriousness, we, the citizens of Lively, truly hope and pray that Google will reconsider its decision. We support your product... Do you? Keep Lively Alive!http://www.petitiononline.com/golively/petition.html


(forwarded message)


FILE CODE: RED CLASSIFIED URGENT AND CONFIDENTIAL

A PLEA TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

To
George W Bush
The President of the United States

Dear Mr. President

Our homeland security has information that our ruler, Google, has a weapon of mass destruction and intends to use it on December 31st 2008. Google will ruthlessly pull the plug on Lively.com, the home of our living, breathing and exciting community.

We are the citizens of Lively (Livelyzens) – the on-line 3D community created by Google, Inc. We are stunned and saddened by this recent Google decision to shut down Lively. Our situation looks grim indeed.

We are appealing to you for your merciful interjection on our behalf. Knowing how dyspathetic you are to the thought of weapons of mass destruction, we appeal to you to interfere yet again, but this time for a real threat to our world. In return we can guarantee you that you can trust our intelligence service and surely your approval ratings will go sky high in the online virtual communities for your valiant war against destroyers of our world.

For that reason we are appealing to you for help in our dauntless struggle. We entreat you to consider these three potential life saving acts:

1. It is well known that one of your final acts as President will be to grant pardons (Article II, Section 2 of the United States Constitution) to those parties you see fit. Perhaps a pardon for Lively from its unwanted and unsought fate would be in order.

2. Inclusion of our plight in the proposed financial bailout that you and your successor President-elect Barack Obama are currently working on would also spare us from an untimely and unseemly departure from this world.

3. If the foregoing is not a possibility, a peace keeping force would be cheerfully and heartily accepted within the confines of Lively by all Livelyzens. We have plenty of rooms available to house your troops and you will find us to be wonderful and polite hosts. And in addition don't worry about the Third Amendment, we're happy to quarter troops!

In summary our world is at risk of total and utter annihilation. Without the intervention and help of fine countries like yours, our fate will be set to a cruel and ultimate demise.We beseech your help.

Yours truly
THE CITIZENS OF LIVELY
http://livelyzens.com

Lively Friends

Lively truly is a wonderful Google Product. Started as another 20% project of Niniane Wang, it truly let us experience a new dimension of the web. The rich 3D Virtual Worlds we traveled in Lively, were filled with friendly avatars from all around the world.
Being from a small island, Sri Lanka, not known to many, I was welcome with open hands of friendship from people from all over the world. I made friends from all over the world incuding, USA, UK, France, Germany, Brazil, Russia, India, Japan, etc.
During my first days in Lively many urged me to creat my first room. When I started on it, many visited, just to check I was doing alright. I still remember setting up the first Jumbotron, where a friend came over to walk me through the steps hurriedly while she was getting late for her classes. I made some true friends who's friendship I will treasure even if Lively is no more.
A friendly chat with these friends in Lively is a part of my life, a treasured moment at the end of a busy day at work.
Ohh Google, please let Lively live...

I became Lively

Ever since I started using Google Search, I became an early adopter to every thing Google had to offer. Google's Blogger , Gmail, Orkut, Google Reader, Google Page Creator, Google Sites, Google Docs, etc., etc.

my Avatar 'Rana' ⇑ & the room Sunny Ranch ⇓ in Lively

When Lively was launched I had to hold back for a while, due to OS incompatibilities. So when I finally got the chance, the first thing I did was to download & install Lively. A new life, a Lively life begun...
I looked through the 'Active Rooms' list. 'Lively: Google Room', ahh that's the place I got to go, and that's where I went.
It took a while to load as I have heard it else where. When it loaded completely, I was mesmerized by the environment I saw. It was lively with people chatting everywhere. I started walking around & many started to say 'hi!'. I told them that I was new to Lively & many offered to help to find my way. Many asked me to set up a new room & instructed me how to. I had never being surrounded by so many welcoming people.
It was an awesome experience. I would never forget my first day at Lively. The friends that I made that day, are stillmy true friends to date.It's pity that the days till it ends are numbered though...

Lively - Google's Neglected Child

While the business decision of Google to shutdown Lively in these economic times may seem to make sense, as a lively user, I am disappointed by this abrupt decision to shutdown a beta product without giving it the right ingredients to succeed.

I see the following as failings of google:

a) Not advertising for it adequately to excite and attract a user base

b) Not opening content development so that users could truly experiment with this beta product and enrich it with content

c) Not providing a mechanism for users to save their content who now stand to lose long hours of work they put in to make creative things with Lively.

d) Not incorporating an ad based revenue model through the virtual rooms. This is the core strength of google and one would think this would have been an obvious step for them in a 3D world. hmmm...

e) Not doing a survey of the users about the tool before deciding to pull the plug

f) Not recognizing the development of a dynamic and close knit community on lively that is willing to do whatever it takes to sustain lively - from staring at ads in their virtual rooms to opting for a paid membership.

The last point is particularly noteworthy in that the Lively users are willing to stand up for a beta product so strongly. This is because there is no equivalent in the virtual world to the aesthetics that Lively provides. The ease of use by embedding on web pages is another big strength of this product.

The Livelyzens (lively users) have come together to appeal to Google to stall the shutdown. (http://livelyzens.com). While time is short, we are hoping to showcase the capabilities of Lively through a Machinima video contest using Google Lively and other initiatives.

Google should consider continuing the product or open-sourcing it (is that even possible? since lively apparently uses a modified version of gamebryo which is licensed?). It is short sighted to shutdown Lively at such an early stage.

Visit http://livelyzens for details about our campaign.

We request netizens and supporters of virtual worlds to evaluate Lively for its potential and support us in our appeal by signing the petition at http://www.petitiononline.com/golively/petition.html

A petition signee hit the nail on the head with this comment "I love Lively, who loves gmail?"

KEEP LIVELY ACTIVE!

Livelyzens Appeal Against Lively Shutdown

Official Google Blog: Lively no more

Visit http://www.livelyzens.com/ to read about the campaign and participate in the Lively machinima contest. Please sign our online petition.

Lively does not deserve to die!

Keep it Alive!

Online Petition to save Lively

Google has announced shutdown of Lively :(

Please support Livelyzens by signing the Online Petition to Keep Lively Alive!

http://www.petitiononline.com/golively/petition.html

What does Lively mean to you?

Google Lively beta was released a few months ago and many of us have come to enjoy Lively.

Please leave a comment to express

1) What Lively means to you
2) What features you would like to see on Lively
3) What your suggestions are for keeping Lively alive
4) What you are willing to do to keep Lively alive

Let us all voice our opinion through comments. We shall then compile all comments into an appeal letter and send it to Google.

Who are Livelyzens?

Livelyzens are the proud and happy residents of Google Lively. Today we are saddened by Google's decision to shutdown lively.

We are appealing through this blog and our website http://www.livelyzens.com/ to keep Lively alive and will showcase all the great things about lively and why Google MUST revisit their decision.

Please pass on this message as emails or comments to blogspots talking about the Google Lively shutdown:

The Livelyzens (Lively users) are coming together to appeal to Google to keep Lively alive.
Lively is a great platform for interaction as well as creativity. It is easy to use, browser based, embeddable on webpages to bring a 3D experience right on your website. While Lively has been in beta and has limited capability in terms of the objects and avatars available, the Livelyzens have been able to come up with very creative ways to create art from what is available. All this in a "clean" 3D world thanks to Google's vigilance in getting rid of rooms with inappropriate content. More than anything, Lively has become a place to make friends for life – from all over the world with wonderful people.

Please visit our website livelyzens.com and participate in the Lively Machinima contest we are conducting to show the creative potential of Google Lively. Please also sign our online petition.

We request netizens to support us in reviving a wonderful 3D world that is a kid friendly and a creative space for art and interaction amongst adults.