Hey guys,

  I know that we have a new chat and it's working out good. But what do you think of Google Lively or Second Life? Are you familiar with them?

 Recently I found out about the Google Lively. It's a 3-D chat room and seems a bit more fun and interactive than what we have. The catch is that you need a google account - but you can make one easily if you don't have one already.

 If you guys don't mind, let me know what you think of the chat. I made up a simple chat room as a test. Here's the link:

http://www.stopmotionmagic.com/lively/

I may look into the Second Life chat and test it at a later date. For now, let me know what your thoughts are on Lively.

i don't like this idea, because lively is not compatible with mac!!!!!!!

i'm sure quite a few people will have macs on these forums, so a few people won't ever be able to participate in the chats, which i find a bit unfair. 

I actually got a few min. in the new room with Marc and it was really cool. He has done a bunch of work and the characters are very animated. You can customize your avatar to look like yourself and play a variety of animations at any time. It is almost perfect for what we all do at this site. He even had meet the Raisins playing on a huge big screen TV that was Sweet. The style of the characters are very Guitar Hero-esque.

 

 I am not sure if it's compatible with Macs or not. Maybe Marc could keep the Flash chat around for that very reason. People that have PC's can log in to both rooms maybe whenever a meeting is taking place. I'm going to leave that one to Marc. Has anyone out there that owns a Mac been able to get it running?  I would guess Google would tailor to Mac users.

I'm using a mac and Lively doesnt' run on it.  I have tried out Second Life though and it's pretty interesting.  I got an acount a year and a half ago with the intention of setting up a theatre to show case my animations. After getting the Second Life account and exploring I ran out of time and energy to get the theatre running.  So maybe it's time for all of us on Stop Motion Magic to put up a theatre on SS to showcase our short videos.  Maybe a 'best of' showcase.  The interesting thing about SS is that you can actually charge viewers a small fee to view the videos, if you'd like.  Maybe we could do that and then take any profits we earn and turn them into prizes for the members here on SMM. 

Anyway, those are just some ideas.

P.S. The downside to Second Life is that you need to pay for it so it might not be for everyone. 

I wouldn't pay for Second Life just for weekly chats, much rather go on Google Lively. 2 meetings a week, one on Sunday for mac users too and 1 on saturday or something for Google Lively, like what Mike said. I've already made an account, its very cool!

I think google is working on Mac compatibility, so in the future it should work for you guys. It's still new, but I really think google is going to make it even better. I really like their stuff.

As Mike mentioned, the 2nd life is computer intensive, so you need a good graphics card to make it work. Plus to make a nice little area for people to join costs money. So I might make Lively part of the site for those who like it more than the simple text chatting. It definitely adds a lot of interactivity.

So what do you guys think, maybe on Saturdays we'll do the 3-D chat, and on Sundays the flash chat?

sure that sounds great!