What is the name of yet another time waster? Lively. With Google Lively you can create a virtual avatar for a virtual world to customize to communicate with other virtual characters. As if there is enough time to do that in reality, you can customize the virtual world to your liking.
This is probably the first time Google has spit out such a horrible product. All of its other services are top of the line and virtually indispensable, and suddenly, it slapped some kiddy game into everybody’s faces. As of now, I can’t really see any real methods they can profit through this. Maybe they will start selling virtual items to the people who use this service? After all, Facebook peddles virtual gifts that certain people actual buy with real money, which never ceases to amaze me. Maybe all this virtual junk does have potential.
Yes, I was quite surprised Google would pop this one out. Lively doesn’t look all that amazing. If someone, anyone could create avatars that looked more human-texture-ish than chlid-like, I would be just astounded. Avatars should be easy to mold into an almost exact likeness of yourself, with face rounding/sharpening features, belly widening/shortening, and any other tools to make it actually more like you, than some strange cartoon.
I’m also a bit uncomfortable with Google’s use of personal data, so this looks like something I’ll avoid.
Realistic avatars would be pretty cool, but this doesn’t look like something I’d use either.