This product has been tested on the following operating systems: Ubuntu Linux and has a average rating of 5

The last rating (5) has been submitted on 2008-07-09 06:45:57 by Anonymous running Ubuntu Linux:
this works fine with no issues, UBUNTU 8.04

Google has been working on virtual world environments for about a year, and now they've announced Lively -- which has an unfortunate moniker that could inspire lawsuits from Microsoft Live branding folks. The descriptions of Google's new service have made Lively sound like a watered-down version of Second Life, aimed at people who can't figure out how to install an application. I'm a Mac user, so I can't even try it out -- but I'll take a stab at justifying Google's "me-too" avatar project.

Obviously, the main difference between Lively and any other virtual chatroom is that Google has access to a nearly instant critical mass of global users. But that doesn't mean Lively will be an sure-fire success. What will help ensure a Google hit is the consistent development of features that cater to users -- and then some text analysis magic that will provide relevant virtual world advertisements based on the Lively chat discussions. This is basically the same game plan that Google has used for Google Maps and Gmail (and Gtalk, too) -- start off with a sort of lackluster service and then add features that are compelling -- while sneaking in ads to monetize the service.

I'm not really disagreeing that Lively seems a bit lame at its start, but I'm slightly more optimistic that Google will be able to cultivate Lively and bring contextual ads into the environment. It just has to be entertaining enough to attract people to use it -- and I guess I don't see extraordinarily high barriers to keeping a Web audience entertained (see Youtube). Additionally, Google can build upon Gmail and Google Maps and its other offerings to enhance Lively -- which is something that Second Life and other virtual worlds can't necessarily do. On the other hand, it is also entirely possible that Lively could follow Orkut -- and miss out on the G-branding (why isn't it called Glively? or Google Life?) and the popularity of Google's more successful products. But I think Lively has a very good chance of tying together many Google services and reaching out to a younger audience.

In response to Mike Masnick, it's mostly true that "you can't just stick ads everywhere" if you don't want to annoy your users. But several popular video games already incorporate subtle advertisements (and Second Life isn't exactly devoid of advertising). In fact, a visual environment for chat only enhances the ads opportunities. I assume Google is smart enough to avoid the simplistic keyword-based ads that might present a user with annoying irrelevant ads that seem creepy and to be spying on your conversations (Google doesn't seem to do that in Gmail, right?). I imagine that the contextual ads in Lively will be more attuned to automatically detecting demographics (eg. based on "OMG, LOLz" conversations) to present targeted, age-appropriate virtual billboards. That's exactly the kind of unobtrusive, contextual advertising that Google is developing and gives it an edge.

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We're running a little experiment here with our discussion on Google's new Lively offering. Two of us at Techdirt, Mike Masnick and Mike Ho reacted quite differently to the announcement, so we're each posting our own take (after sharing them with each other) and we'll let everyone has out their thoughts in the comments. We're hoping to work on a few more "debates" like this one in the near future. This is Mike Masnick's post. Mike Ho's post is here.

Google's latest product launch, Google Lively is a 3D chat room offering that has plenty of people comparing it to Second Life, though in its initial version, it seems a lot closer to IMVU, a popular 3D chat solution that is apparently growing like mad. It's really no different than your everyday chat room other than the fact that your text chat takes place in a 3D animated room with avatars who can do a few different pre-designated actions. The Google version requires a software download, but after that apparently will appear in a browser, meaning that it can be included as parts of any site. It's still not clear what the actual advantage of such an offering is beyond traditional chat -- or what sort of advantage Google may have in providing a similar solution to what's already out there, beyond just the Google brand name. Perhaps there's more to this offering, but at a first pass, this seems like a me-too effort by Google without any significant advantage (yet).

This isn't say it won't get usage, but I'm having trouble figuring out what about this is really all that useful compared to other solutions out there. Google's successes all seem to be about a new and different take on something out there that makes is significantly more useful: Google search made search better, faster and cleaner. Gmail massively increased storage while providing a much cleaner, faster and more useful interface. Google Maps took the tired interface of internet mapping and made it (again) cleaner, faster and more useful. It's not clear that Lively really does any of that. It requires a download, and seems to merely copy what else is already out there without a significant advantage over any of them. Perhaps people will use this just because it's from Google -- but it still seems like it should be more compelling then just adding 3D avatars to chat.

As for Mike Ho's claims that this follows the same path as Gmail and Google Maps, I disagree. Both of those were instant sensations that attracted instant attention and usage do their differentiation. I also disagree with the assertion that Google is doing this just to add in contextual ads. While that may happen, contextual ads on chat seem a much more difficult proposition than on email, where there's a lot more content. Plus, it's difficult to see how ads would fit unobtrusively into such a scenario. Despite what some assert, Google doesn't try to stick ads everywhere, knowing that too many ads will often upset users. Finally, it's difficult to see how ads stuck into a synchronous process such as chat ad value. It would seem like they do more to detract value.

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Slashdot points us to the amusing story of technology "solving" a theft of an irrigation controller on a farm, thanks to a wireless connection. The irrigation controller was stolen, which was first noticed when it sent an error message to the guy who runs them. A few weeks later, though, he was surprised to get a signal from the controller, and he was able to communicate with the device and get the company that supplied the wireless connection to triangulate and reveal the general location of the unit (the guy had the maker of the controller, who obviously contracts with the wireless provider, request this info to make sure the request was legit). From that, the guy used Google Earth to figure out where the controller must be -- and went to the local police. After investigating the person whose property it ended up on, the controller went missing again... only to turn back up in its original location a few weeks later.

While it's a neat story of technology thwarting a theft, there are a few questions raised by the story. To be honest, the full writeup so pumps up this particular brand of irrigation controller system, that it almost sounds like an apocryphal story made up to hype up how much better this controller is than competitors (look, it's theft proof!). Also, despite the "happy ending" -- the actual thieves were not apprehended, and future thieves will simply learn to disable the wireless communications ability. In the meantime, though, it's a reminder that technology is making the job of the ordinary thief somewhat more difficult these days.

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I saw this presentation live a couple of weeks ago at the Personal Democracy Forum and would suggest that it’s worth 25 minutes of your time to take a listen. I really like a lot of what Pesce is trying to say, even though the verbiage gets in the way at times. And it really pushes my thinking about cell phones in general. Have a look.

Here is the overview from the PDF presentation page, which has some great talks by Rushkoff, Shirky, Lessig, Zittrain and others:

In this keynote talk at Personal Democracy Forum 2008, Pesce situates the current moment of transformation in the context of 60,000 years of human civilization; argues that our innate tendencies to connect with each other, copy behaviors and share ideas are now on hyperdrive; and projects a near-future where “hyperempowered” individuals and networks transform politics. As he concludes: “Representative democracies are a poor fit to the challenges ahead, and ‘rebooting’ them is not enough. The future looks nothing like democracy, because democracy, which sought to empower the individual, is being obsolesced by a social order which hyperempowers him.” The text of his talk is available on his blog here. He has also posted his slides on Slideshare, here.

In light of the Obama campaigns use of social tools, Pesce pushes the thinking quite a bit…

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Last month, I posted how cool it was that Republican Congressman John Culberson was really using Twitter to communicate with people. It was a great use of the technology. However, today he's been using Twitter to ignite a totally misguided partisan war, pretending (falsely) that Democrats are trying to prevent him from using Twitter. First, he announced on Twitter that "the Dems are trying to censor Congressmen's ability to use Twitter" claiming that "They want to require prior approval of all posts to any public social media/internet/www site by any member of Congress!!!" Fascinating, and troubling, if true, but it's not actually true.

The actual issue is one that we discussed a few months back. Existing House rules actually forbid members of Congress from posting "official communications" on other sites. This was first noticed by a first-term Congressman who was worried that posting videos on YouTube violated this rule. Other Congressional Reps told him to not worry about it as everyone ignored that rule, and no one would get in trouble for using various social media sites such as YouTube. However, that Congressman pushed forward, and eventually got Congress to act. Of course, rather than fixing the real problem (preventing Reps from posting on social media sites), they simply asked YouTube to allow Reps to post videos in a "non-commercial manner." YouTube agreed, and that was that.

However, the existing rules still stood. Culberson's complaint stems for a letter (pdf) sent by Democratic Rep. Michael Capuano, suggesting that the rules actually be changed to be loosened to deal with this situation and make it easier to post content on various social media sites. Culberson, however, bizarrely claims that this is the Democrats trying to limit what he can say on Twitter. But that's actually not at all what the letter states. The problem isn't this letter, but the existing rules that are already in place. In fact, based on the letter, it would appear that this would make it possible for Congressional Reps to Twitter, so long as their bio made it clear they were Reps.

A bunch of people tried to understand this, and even I asked him to clarify why the problem was with this new letter, as opposed to the existing rules. His response did not address the question at all -- but rather was the identical response he sent to dozens of people who questioned his claims. He notes that based on the letter, each Twitter message must meet "existing content rules and regulations." Indeed, but the problem is that's already true based on those existing content rules and regulations. The problem isn't this new effort, but those existing rules and regulations, which mean that his existing Twitter messages violated the rules.

It's really disappointing to see someone who had embraced the technology use it to try to whip up Twitter users into a frenzy, while misleading them to do so -- and then not using the tools to respond to actual criticisms. The problem here is that the existing rules for Reps is problematic. It's not this new effort to loosen the rules, other than in the fact that the loosening of the rules might not go far enough. That's not, as Culberson claims, an attempt to censor him on Twitter, but simply an attempt to loosen the rules with a focus on YouTube and (most likely) with an ignorance of the fact that Twitter even exists.

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Review site Yelp caused quite a ruckus this week when they deleted a bunch of user accounts that they deemed to be gaming the system. Many of the users whose accounts were deleted were business owners -- Yelp accused them of trading positive reviews with other business owners, quid pro quo. Yelp has had a tumultuous relationship with its merchants in the past because of negative reviews from Yelpers; some merchants had even tried to ban Yelpers from even visiting their establishments. This tension is unfortunate, since Yelp makes its money from selling these very merchants their services. That said, hopefully Yelp has not overlooked the larger problem that still exists on their site: an overwhelming number of reviews per establishment without any good tools for filtering or determining trust. Furthermore, Yelp has become quite a target for "Foodies," who complain that the reviews from users are pedestrian and inconsistent; Eater has an entire column devoted to the "shortcomings and nuances of the Yelp empire." Despite all of the negative attention that Yelp has been getting, the most important factor is whether or not it continues to grow as a useful resource for users. Yelp just recently surpassed Citysearch in number of users in March of this year, so perhaps they are on the right path.

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News release: "Despite a decline in the number of Web sites advertising or selling controlled prescription drugs, like OxyContin and...

In today's Globe & Mail, a letter by Ken Georgetti, contesting the Globe's coverage of the July 2nd release of Ingrid Betancourt and 14 prisoners of war held by the FARC in Colombia.

Georgetti writes: "The only thing more 'stunning' than the rescue was your rush to link this action to the Canada-Colombia trade negotiations in your editorial Colombia's Resurgence (July 4) and in Jeffrey Simpson's column A Bold Rescue Is Good News For Colombia - And Canada (July 5)."

This morning on Democracy Now, Amy Goodman held a roundtable on Colombia with Mario Murillo, Michael Evans and Manuel Rozental.

Rozental states:

"I, first of all, have to say, like I think almost every Colombian, that we were absolutely elated by the liberation of Ingrid and that her condition is good... The fourteen prisoners of war, mistreated, abused, and I’m also glad, as everybody, that they’re free."

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