At the end of 2008, Google's Lively closed down. However in the comparatively few weeks since the announcement of the impending shutdown, Lively has been rebuilt from relative scratch by a Chinese company, and the new service, called newlively went live around the same time that the original service shuttered.

If you look at newlively's Web-site, you'll likely be struck by the haunting familiarity of it. That's hardly surprising. That appears to be Lively's original HTML code, just slightly tweaked for the new domain name. Newlively's creator claims to have recreated the models from the original. We've not tried the new service ourselves -- being just a bit a bit nervous about third-party downloads of debatable antecedence.

Nevertheless, the service is operational, and virtual worlds writer, artist and composer, Dizzy Banjo has some more information about this unexpected recreation of Google's virtual environment service.

Google's Lively presents us with an interesting scenario. It was literally a checklist of what critics have been saying that virtual environments such as Linden Lab's Second Life absolutely must have in order to make it.

A simplified user-interface, embedded in the Web-browser, content designed by professionals rather than (mostly) amateurs, a 'room' (or contained space) model rather than a widespread world. While it was touted as having no requirement for a separate downloadable client, that wasn't actually true -- it did actually have one, though it was relatively painless to download and install.

In short, it was the perceived holy grail of virtual environment 'must-haves' for success, as so frequently touted in media articles which lauded its simplicity and accessibility. Also, in short, Lively was a failure -- a spectacular one. Spectacular, but not without educational value.

One of the good things about Google is that they try stuff. They can afford to try out projects, and don't stick with what isn't working. Well, it appears that their Lively virtual environment chat-rooms haven't worked out. Google will be shuttering the Lively service on 31 December 2008, less than six months after launching.

Lively's Web-site -- launched to the public on July 9 this year -- will remain up, and the images of the rooms preserved, but the rooms themselves will no longer be active. This seems to also end Google's plans to leverage Lively as a games-platform. It isn't clear at this point what it means for Google's partner, X-Ray Kid Studios who has been working on Lively for the last two years, and was increasingly positioned as Google's games division.

From Chiba, Japan, AP reports on Sony and Microsoft's upcoming avatar-based offerings at the annual Tokyo Game Show. Associated Press goes to great lengths to avoid spooking what they seem to feel are a parochial and hidebound audience with gems like, 'In the so-called "metaverse" in cyberspace, players manipulate digital images called "avatars" that represent themselves, engaging in relationships, social gatherings and businesses.'

Of course, the notion of graphical avatars as a part of a wide variety of Internet services has persisted for most of the last two decades, but even the sense of this is backwards.To the casual and uninformed observer it might appear that the user manipulates this (ahem) 'digital image' to perform actions, but this is substantively not the case. The user moves or takes action through the virtual environment in relation to spaces and to other users, and the avatar represents the action to others.

It's just that sort of long-arm punditry that seems to make AP compare Sony's Home and Microsoft's Avatar service with Linden Lab's Second Life, despite Sony and Microsoft's respective services having about as much in common with Second Life, as they have with Mortal Kombat. 'The real-time interactive computer-graphic worlds are similar to Linden Lab's "Second Life,"' writes the AP correspondent, in a wondrously surreal moment.

	Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.

Linden Lab certainly showed signs of fear when Google's Lively kicked off its public beta. Now we're seeing signs more akin to terror, panic or desperation. 'Who wouldn't be concerned when Google comes after their business?' said new Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon to Bloomberg.

Given recent changes and marketing pushes, you can see Linden Lab's management showing a sheen of sweat. Curiously, it seems that Google isn't after Linden Lab's business -- Lively's certainly no competitor to the business that Linden Lab has. However, what Google represents seems to be a threat to the business that Linden Lab wants to have.

This week saw the hiring of Frank Ambrose (AOL's head of technology for infrastructure and network services for a decade) as Senior VP of global technology. While Ambrose has more tech knowledge than the average suit in his position, his primary competencies seem to be negotiations, coordination, contracts and costs -- which all marries up nicely with Linden Lab making a push into corporate, government and military sales, and hiring additional staff to do just that. We're not sure what they're going to be selling, exactly, but virtual environment meeting spaces are probably right at the top of the list.

	Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.

While the announcement of the Google Lively public beta may have taken many by surprise, apparently it did not take Linden Lab unawares -- their Second Life messages were already lined up and ready to go.

Indeed considering that information about Lively's launch was available to a number of people who were close to Linden Lab, either as partners or ex-staffers, it seems silly to suggest that Linden Lab might not have known Lively's public beta launch date, unless those contacts were aflame with considerable, searing resentment.

Wheezing, clanking and dripping oil from dark and unnameable apertures, one of Linden Lab's most neglected subsystems -- the marketing machine -- arose from it's years-long slumber and went about it's ponderous, mechanical business.

Linden Lab's newly-minted CEO, Mark Kingdon, has posted another communique to Second Life users, and it isn't hard to see a certain fear in the phrasing and timing.

'The possibilities of Virtual Worlds have attracted a slew of entrepreneurs and even some Internet giants,' writes Kingdon in his second paragraph, 'Some are offering a simple, visually appealing chat solution. Others are more ambitious. Second Life offers something no ones else does - an astoundingly rich array of user-created content and a large, diverse and ever-expanding virtual economy.'

And it isn't hard to see which Internet giant and what visually appealing chat solution he might be referring to, especially considering the timing of the statement.

The Massively crew has spent a little more time hammering away at Google's new virtual artifice, Lively. By now, you've probably seen all sorts of news reports calling it a rival and competitor to Linden Lab's virtual world, Second Life. Technically, that's what we call bollocks.

Describing Lively as a rival to Second Life is like calling a conference center a rival to a library. They're just not servicing the same needs, and the comparison is fundamentally nonsensical. Lively is tightly focused, and fails to intrude on the bulk of virtual worlds space.

So, what's the deal with Lively? Let's take a look ...

Open to the public just today, it seems hard to believe that Google's new Lively service is the much-vaunted virtual world product Project Snowcrash aka MyWorld that has been in secret beta-testing for some time.

Lively is a series of web-embeddable virtual spaces (think Metaplace) that function as a series of otherwise disconnected chatrooms (think IMVU or Twinity). You download the browser plugin for Firefox or Microsoft Internet Explorer (both Windows only, sorry folks), sign in with your google account, create a room or join one and you're ready to go. Just make sure you've signed into the Lively website at least once -- otherwise you'll have the Joining Room message forever.

A selection of 'hip' human and furry avatars are available, along with an assortment of clothing. There is no user-created content at this time. We'll have some more impressions for you once we've given this a once-over around the office, so stay tuned.

Corr Linden today posted the announcement of a Google Calendar on the official Linden Blog today. The posting remained up long enough to hit the public feeds and the Web newswires, and to start attracting user comments before the post was yanked from the site.

It was up long enough for the post (though not the comments) to be cached and copied nearly everywhere, so here's the link to the calendar if you missed it. At present it only seems to contain Linden staff in-world office hours.

We've no idea at this stage why the post was yanked. It doesn't seem to contain any secrets, sinister or otherwise. You can add the calendar to your Google Calendar account by adding PublicEvents@lindenlab.com.

Cory Ondrejka, co-founder of the virtual world of Second Life and ex-CTO of Linden Lab has switched roles. No, it's not actually another virtual world, but we're mentioning it anyway, because we know you all love Ondrejka, or love to hate him. Either way.

Ondrejka's moving in with EMI (one of the 'big four' record companies) as their senior vice-president of Digital Strategy. 'It's time to take everything I learned about innovation, community, intangible items, markets, economics, and technology building Second Life and apply it to a much larger arena,' said Ondrejka today, 'There are a million and one difficult problems to solve, but I'm absolutely thrilled about my new role.'