Google's Lively view of the future

/*title:Google对未来的生动展望*/
Translator: AI, Frank
Checker: Frank

Lively reminds me of something like IMVU, an instant messaging program that enables 3D avatar chat, in that it provides off-the-shelf avatars with teen appeal for socialising. It's a pretty simple: it's about chatting in rooms that can be customised to reflect your taste, and is nothing like as grandiose as something like Second Life or There. It's not a single persistent world, but a bunch of ad hoc virtual spaces that let people come together and show off their avatar identity through chatting and flirting.

Lively使我想起了一些像IMVU那种支持3D虚拟社区互动聊天的远程信息程序，因为它提供了现成的虚拟角色来满足青少年的社交请求。它很容易上手：只与制定反映您口味的聊天室有关，而不像Second Life或其他同类服务那么庞大。它不仅仅是一个持久的世界，而且是一组特设的虚拟空间，使人们能够走到一起通过闲聊和调情来展示他们的虚拟身份。

One thing Google doesn't do is bet against the web, and as you'd expect Lively is firmly web-based: it runs in your browser after you've downloaded an applet (if you're lucky – it keeps crashing my browsers). The idea of a 3D experience that can be easily built and accessed via the web, rather than some huge downloadable client is a solid one. It's one of the principles behind virtual world heavy-weight Ralph Koster's company, Metaplaces. However, Metaplaces has much grander ambitions, and wants to provide web-based tools that will scale from simple games to rich virtual worlds: according to its website, “We have a vision: to let you build anything, and play everything, from anywhere.”

Google没做的一件事就是打赌网络繁荣不会发生，也正如你所期望的，Lively是坚定地基于网络：你下载完一个Applet后，它会在你的浏览器上运行（如果你幸运的话—Applet一直冲击着我的浏览器）。3D体验的想法可以被容易地建立，同时可经由网络取得，远好于一些大型的单一下载的客户端。这是虚拟世界潜在的原则之一，该原则给Ralph Koster的公司Metaplaces带来了沉重的压力，不论如何，Metaplaces有更加宏伟的目标，他们想提供等级从简单游戏到丰富的虚拟世界且基于网络的工具：据Metaplaces的网站提供,“我们有一个幻想：让你能建立任何东西，让你能游戏一切东西，不论你身处何处。 ”

Google's Lively team seem to want you to, uh, hang around in some cool online chat rooms and exchange virtual hugs. To be honest, the whole thing seems a bit underwhelming. Its launch reminds me a bit of Google's social network site, Orkut. This was another project, like Lively, that was developed by a Google employee in part of the “20 per cent time” devoted to individual pet projects, and another one that has not really set the world alight. Orkut is a perfectly respectable online community, but of course something of an also-ran in a world now dominated by My Space and Facebook.

Google的Lively团队似乎想让你，嗯，在一些在线酷聊室到处逗留并且互相交换虚拟拥抱。诚然，整个事件看起来好像有点被人们冷淡。事件的发起使我想起Google的站点Orkut。这是像Lively的另一个项目，它是由一个Google的雇员开发作为“20%时间”的一部分，“20%时间”致力于私人宠物项目，这个服务项目实际上没能给世界带来曙光。Orkut是一个极可敬的网上社区，但是，一些存在世上且被My Space和Facebook掌控的网上社区也同样可敬。

For now, Lively is what we've got: that's the science fact. However, given Google's extraordinary scale and the immense possibilities created by its huge web audience, I can't help thinking more along the lines of science fiction, imagining where Google could take this technology and do something really interesting with it.

至于现在,Lively是我们已有的：那是科学事实。不论如何，科学给予了Google特别的等级和被它众多造访者创造的极大可能性，我不禁沿着科学小说的路线想了更多，设想Google在哪里可以利用这项技术，并且用这项技术做一些真正有趣的事。

Google has at least two unique advantages in the virtual world space. The first is the extraordinary power of its search engine. The problem of trying to find something in a virtual world is not unlike the problem of finding something in the real world. The Onion did a great gag story about Google planes bombing the last remaining things in the world that were not in its search engine, but the gag wouldn't work for a Google virtual world, because in a virtual world every atom of creation exists digitally and is in theory locatable by search. As worlds get richer and more intricate, Google strikes me as the best possible entity to help you find stuff, whether you're searching in San Francisco or Second Life.

Google在虚拟世界空间至少有两项独一无二的优势。第一项是Google的特别的搜索引擎动力。试图在虚拟事界找到些东西不能跟在真实世界找东西相题并论。Onion对Google平台做了一件很添堵的事，引爆了余下并非在其搜索引擎领域的事件,但是gag不会为一个虚拟的Google世界工作,因为在虚拟世界中，创造物的每一个微小的组成都是以数字格式存在并且处在搜索的理论定位。随着世界变的更丰富和复杂,Google让我感觉到它是最有可能帮你找到东西的途径，不论你在旧金山搜索，还是在第二生命搜索。

The second unique advantage is Google Earth. This is already an amazing creation, a mirror world of incredible richness available free on most PCs. You can already see the planet from space, dive down to the street level and see incredible detail in 360-degree panoramas. You can already build your own 3D buildings and add them to Google Earth, and Google continues to add more content to this remarkable piece of software.

Google的第二项独特的优势是Google Earth。这已经是一项令人惊奇的创造，一个难以置信丰富的镜面世界，并可在大多数PC上免费使用。你已经可以在太空观看地球，可以下降到街道的水平并观看360度全景图片。你已经可以建立你自己的3D建筑，然后将它们加入到Google Earth中，同时Google继续在这个软件中加入更多内容。

However, imagine if Google Earth became a portal to other virtual spaces. If you were in business mode, you could fly in via Google Earth to check the name of that company whose building you keep driving past, find its real-world buildings, use them to launch its webpage, and then enter its Lively virtual space to interact with some real employees. As a tourist, you could fly into New York, check out the hotels in the area near where your friends live, and then fly your avatar into the hotel's Lively space to talk to someone about getting a deal on a weekend break.

无论如何,设想如果Google Earth成为其他虚拟空间的一个入口。如果你处在商会气氛中，你可以经由Google Earth跨越空间，核对那家公司的名称，也就是你一直驶过的那幢建筑，找出那家公司在真实世界的建筑，用Google Earth打开他们的往页，之后进入他们的Lively虚拟空间去和一些真正的雇员们互动。作为一个旅行者，你可以飞入纽约，查看在你朋友居住地附近区域的旅店，之后以你的虚拟化身进入该旅店的Lively空间去和那的人谈论关于周末预订的事宜。

Google Earth comes alive because it's a living, breathing online community which uses the power of social networks to layer value onto a planet simulation. You enter a 3D space but can then easily locate and activate 2D web information, such as pictures or Wikipedia entries. It's this integration of 2D and 3D which is so powerful, and Google, which dominates the world's text-based information and has hell of a leg up in 3D via Google Earth, seems to me well placed to create the ultimate mash-up of real and virtual world content. It will be interesting to see how Lively develops, but for now, we don't need another stand alone virtual space: the real magic will happen when these worlds start to collide.

Google Earth愈加活跃因为它有生命，汲取着以大众网络为动力来为模拟世界分划价值的网上社区。你进入一个3D空间但是之后能轻松地找出和激活像是图片或维基百科词条的2D网络信息。2D和3D的强力组合，Google对全球基于文本形式的信息的掌控，并且通过Google Earth 在3D方面还留有一手，这一切给我的感觉好像Google是我将真实世界和虚拟世界的内容最终融合好地点。看着Lively如何发展将会很有趣，但是现在，我们不需要另一个孤立的虚拟世界：当真实和虚拟相碰时真正的魔力就会显现。