Orrorin’s Diary

O Lively, Lively, why are you so lovely?

I have been waiting for you for a long time to come. Finally and surprisingly it is Google who arrived with this new application: Lively

There are many virtual worlds on the internet, what makes me melt in front of Lively.com?

Second Life, There and the others showed us we have the technology to build virtual worlds. However most of them lacked a conducting line, something more relevant than just chatting. Video games like World of Warcraft (WOW) added background and a raison d’être to the whole story. People joining know why they are there and what they are supposed to do.

Virtual worlds have to evolve and bring content, this is one of the reasons why we start seeing them merge or become compatible supporting avatar movements between them.

Lively and Vivaty are following another scheme and work on another scale. Both of them use a decentralized structure implementing links in existing platforms like blogs or social networks. Today each of this links works separately creating a unique room. I personally installed Lively on my blog and started creating my own personal “chez moi”.

Anybody can create a room or house in other existing virtual worlds. But what’s amazing about it?

The way Lively works or at least I hope will function in the near future, is like the ghost portraits in Harry Potter or the painting used by the protagonists in the Sandman Comic books. The way I envision it is that with time, Google will build tunnels linking the existing rooms, therefore supporting the travelling of an avatar from one place to another. This means that with time blogs, social networks and virtual worlds will become one. The search for contacts will be done through virtual travel, but the real content or personal ID will be the person’s blog or profile. This might become a possible evolution to the actual search engines in combination with behavioral and semantic search.

As I tried to explain in my last post, the iPhone opened something new, transforming with time a mobile phone into a person’s virtual ID. The relation between mobile phone and virtual worlds will grow through this new infrastructure. Again, hardware is becoming more dependent on the road software is taking. As the Web2.0 is related to human interaction and the Web3.0 to human - technology interaction, we may expect to see a lot of virtualization. This might give a whole new meaning to the Google Phone and Android.

Virtual Worlds are considered today as additional worlds parallel to ours. However, an infrastructure like Lively might actually create a new layer to our real world.

The iPhone 3G has arrived in Belgium!!! Yippee!!!

600€ plus subscription, that’s indeed a lot of money! So the question is: is it worth it? Why do people spend so much on a mobile phone? Why so much hustle on a piece of hardware?

Hardware?  What hardware?

You mean:

Applications! Applications! Applications! (thank you Steve)

Technology wise, the new iPhone is busier catching-up than actually innovating. As I do not have an iPhone, nor plan to buy one (yet), I can’t give any opinion on its technical aspect and have to refer to others who tested the phone, like Engadget.

What I believe to be groundbreaking with the new iPhone, its 3G, GPS and usability is actually that it copied what Microsoft did a long time ago with IBM. In the years ’70 Microsoft provided Big Blue with software. At that time, IBM was a colossus focusing on large hardware who actually didn’t really believe in the evolution of personal computers, opening this way a breach for others. That’s how Microsoft and Intel succeeded into developing what was at the start a niche market and evolved to become the technology we use today.

As hardware evolved taking giant leaps, so did software, and with the broadband Internet, even faster. Due to social medias, we arrived today at a turning point where the software will motivate the development of the next hardware. Software is no more a complement providing you a return on your high investment in a complex combination of metal and silicon pieces. The program is today king.

But what is the relation with the iPhone?

There are many powerful PDA’s on the market with 3G, GPS and access to libraries of software, but none focuses on the user’s experience.

Not only did Apple intelligently focus on the usability but it also combined a closed-kind-of-open platform and a strong dedication to applications through their online store. It is true most of the applications can be considered as of limited value and sometimes too expensive. The point is that Apple came again with a new frame of mind and others will have to follow.

More people will start using iPhones and alikes, more society will move to a mobile internet structure. This will help reduce costs and standardize mobile connectivity.

Each mobile phone represents a gate to others, whether applications or people. It becomes an interactive ID or avatar of the user. More than anything else today, the new mobile phone will be the link between the user and the virtual world.

If Second Life and the others showed how virtual worlds are in its infancy, the iPhone will help build a structure moving it into maturity.

Though I’m more like an HTC guy, I’d say thank you Apple for forcing this new paradigm. I just hope the telecom companies won’t screw it up…