Earlier this week there was the first successful teleport form Second Life’s Grid onto IBM’s Opengrid.

And today I learned google created Lively, a virtual 3d world that you can actually embed in your webpage. cool. the client apparently is windows only.

so far the media isn’t too impressed:

Lively feels more like a Google Talk-powered chat room with 3-D camera controls than an immersive environment like Second Life.

that’s from infromationweek, and you can find the article here.

The whole concept does seem a bit ripped off from IMVU, where you had a standard im client with pretty cartoon-ish avatars.

I doubt that the cartoonish avatars are the way to go, at least judging from the state of affairs in SecondLife, where avatars are more and more real-life every time you log on, not only when it comes to shapes and skins, but clothing and apparel. Folks with serious Poser and image manipulation skills are popping into SL making a profit and making everything look more real life pushing the platform forward. (or not! some dystopian sims like “the fissure” or sci-fi role play sims are anything but real-life, but the quality of avatars and environment is unprecedented)

(picture by nonzo, check the flickr page for awsome SL pics)

I admit, I have a “thing” for virutal 3D worlds…not for what they are today, but for the promiss they hold.

I’ll give lively a go when I get off work today and see what it’s really about.