Google isn’t waiting for the others to move forward and this seems to the be the motto for most areas of the web involving connecting with users and building a new fundamental tool. Their latest creation is a virtual online world going by the name “Lively” which runs in the browser as a plugin (currently only on Windows XP and Vista machines). The download is just over 400KB so that went quickly and the installation was just as easy.

You then get to choose a room (currently there are only seperate rooms just like in a chat room) to enter and you sign up with your google login. Your room loads up in the background and you get to choose your very own avatar look and if you decide to get mroe involved you can customize this figure as well. It all doesn’t stop right there. You can choose from a growing catalog of avatars, outfits, furniture, and rooms to create your own chat room and embed it on your own website. At the moment only a selected group of trusted testers, vendors and creative agencies are allowed to create new items but Google mentions in the Lively help page that they hope to enable user-generated content and even more customization in the future.

The navigation through the rooms occurs with either the keyboard or mouse and you have the possibility to set up the way the view works: avatar’s view, bird’s eye view or with the viewfinder.

I’ll be checking this out in more detail soon, try it yourself over at

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