Google lively takes on second life

GOOGLE’S NEW TOOL, Lively, creates 3D social spaces on web sites. The platform lets users create and personalize avatars and their own virtual rooms.

That’s nothing new: second life does as much. But lively users can embed rooms in their website, Blogs or Facebook or My space pages.

Users can show You tube videos on Virtual TVs and display images in picture frames too. To run the lively Beta(www.lively.com), your computer must run Windows and either Internet Explorer or Firefox. You must be 13 years of age or older.

Immediately after the launch, some users complained because the platform supports only Windows.

Some says that the interface is clunky, or crashes Firefox.

But some give the cartoon style graphics thumbs –up.”If anyone can make money [on this], it’s Google,” says Gartner’s Steve Prentice.