I agree with Google Maps Mania on this — I’m quite disappointed that it’s not built on top of Google Earth. However, it’s certainly a unique creation. Google has just launched Lively.
It’s essentially Second Life, but with a million different worlds. You create a “room”, then embed it on your site. People can hop into your room and play around. It’s certainly an interesting idea.
Below is a video with a bit more info, and here are a list of the most popular rooms so far, or go check out GEH Island.
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Lively Map
It has long been rumoured that Google were going to release their own virtual world built on top of Google Earth. On Tuesday Google did release their own Virtual World, called Lively. Unfortunately Lively is a stand alone product and doesn't utilise the 3D terrain and 3D buildings of Google Earth.
However there is no reason why you can't embed Lively into Google Maps. Lively allows users to build their own virtual worlds or 'rooms' and then to embed the rooms into their own websites using an iframe. So I have quickly thrown together this map to show how it is possible to embed a Lively room on Google Maps.
This actually could be a useful application. It may just happen that schools, clubs and other organisations start building their own virtual rooms with Lively based on a real world location. Google Maps seems as good a way as any to navigate and find these virtual rooms.
To play in any of the 'rooms' I have embedded on the map you will need to install the Lively plug-in (Windows only) and have or create a Google account.
If anyone wants to develop this as an idea feel free to cut and paste the code for the map.
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