From the Official Google Blog:

In July we launched Lively in Google Labs because we wanted users to be able to interact with their friends and express themselves online in new ways. Google has always been supportive of this kind of experimentation because we believe it’s the best way to create groundbreaking products that make a difference to people’s lives. But we’ve also always accepted that when you take these kinds of risks not every bet is going to pay off.

That’s why, despite all the virtual high fives and creative rooms everyone has enjoyed in the last four and a half months, we’ve decided to shut Lively down at the end of the year. It has been a tough decision, but we want to ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business. Lively.com will be discontinued at the end of December, and everyone who has worked on the project will then move on to other teams.

We’d encourage all Lively users to capture your hard work by taking videos and screenshots of your rooms. Thank you for sharing this experience with us. We’ve learned a lot about how users interact in rich social environments, and we hope you’ve enjoyed your time with Lively.

Posted by The Lively Team

I wonder, though luck for the content creators that started to spend a large amount of time experimenting with Google’s Lively? Wasn’t ‘Lively’ not err.. lively enough? Not enough interest as sex & flirting was not allowed in Lively? :D And err, is this one less competition for Second Life, or a large bunch of people that now will not get interested in the concept of ‘3D worlds’ in the first few years? :/

Hat Tip: via Kris Constellation, still alive! ;)

Miss Ordinal Malaprop

If you have never heard about Ordinal Malaprop before, you should be ashamed, as she is famous for an ingenious Illustration of the Cosmology of the Grid, making flaming LL less time consuming, and a wide variety of public available scripts which can be used as is or as a learning resource and many fun gadgets. Oh, and answering my often boring questions on the correct use of the English Language. That aside. ;)

About Second Life Weapons

Miss Malaprop’s talk was - as anticipated - enlightening, and she offered an easy categorisation for weapon owners. Personally, I think I fall under this category: “There are people whose _only_ real interest is in form. “Fashionistas,” if that is not an insulting term. A weapon is basically an accessory. It really doesn’t matter an awful lot quite what it does.” Sure, I’m totally happy with my Luger shooting blueberry muffins. :D

Another excerpt: “While preparing myself for this evening I was pondering on the nature of what a “weapon” actually is and really, the conclusion that I came to was that, at base, it is in fact a communications device. And not merely in the usual “only language they understand” sort of way. The underlying nature of a “weapon” is to communicate certain information - be that by a built-in protocol such as the Linden Damage System or via some sort of other more custom one.” I am only left to wonder what my Blueberry Shooting Luger & Couch gun communicate! ;) If you want to read more about Miss Malaprop’s thoughts on Second Life Weaponry, or benefit from the good advice she shares, I suggest you head over to the transcript on Babbage’s Ning Group General information on Miss Malaprop and her projects you can find at ordinalmalaprop.com.

Babbage & Cake

Right before I crashed, Dandellion - attending in classy steampunk robot gear - pointed out to me that not everybody seemed to be focussed on the nature and creation of weaponry. Some seemed more interested in the nature and consummation consumption of the tea & cake. Aren’t they adorable? (in a non pervert kinda way, thank you for needing to clarify that, RL media and in-world witch hunters! *sighs*)

You are a girl and want a gun?

Because I am in a giving mood - I’m feeling strange lately - and still a Virtual Girl with Gun, I’m buying the first lady avatar that replies here with the correct answer to ‘What was Ordinal Malaprop’s solution as to not have to use voice inSL?’ one of Miss Malaprop’s finest works, a vertical clock-loading pistol. You’re a bloke? Sorry, this is one of those cases of positive discrimination that sucks bigtime! ;)

This Japanese 3D virtual girlfriend is just perfect, you just need the augmented reality software, 2 Cyber Cubes, 2 Cyber Sticks and a dictionary for the instructions. Oh, and of course a computer and webcam, as she will not really appear on in your work cubicle. But, in return, Cyber Maid Alice will let you touch, caress, and play with her whilst she responds ‘appropriately’, whatever that may be. She can talk - in Japanese, of course -, change costumes, sweep your (virtual) desktop and holds a range of emotions. I can only assume they left the ‘angry girlfriend’ one out. “The Cyber Sticks have varying patterns on each side that represent a different tool, such as a big grabber hand or a poking finger, that you can use to to flirt with your new digital girlfriend. Or, if you’re mean, torment her endlessly.” Did I mention she has a cat as well as a mouse outfit? :D

I you’d ask me which Augmented Reality game will be more popular: the Dennou Figure ARis or Sony’s Eye of Judgement, I’d place my L$ on Miss Virtual Alice! Oh, and if ‘Sinterklaas‘ does exist, he’ll get me one of these by December 6th! ;)

Watch Cyber Maid Alice in action:

(link)

And because they want to prove this is fun for girls too (and I like the ‘over the top’), another one:

(link)

First saw this at BardHaven

…
Jim: What do they do at their cubicles?
Bob: They sit at computers.
Jim: All day?
Bob: Yeah, most of the day.
Jim: So, how is that different from accessing Second Life?
Bob: We can shake hands, Jim. And here’s where it gets really interesting.. if I fidget with my hands, you can ‘read’ that signal and make business decisions based on that body movement!
Lucy: How many fingers am I holding up, Bob?
Bob: Very funny.
Jim: So, when they attend conferences or larger meetings, how do they do any networking if they don’t have profiles to click on?
Bob: They shake hands! Duh. That’s where the real magic is. Then, they give each other what they call a ‘business card’. They then take those cards back to their cubicles and look each other up on the web, and send each other emails. Priceless.
Jim: We can communicate much more efficiently here, it seems. They can’t just send each other messages, or share references, or have a group chat with a few like-minded people during the conference?
Lucy: No way. I’ve seen these so-called *First Life* conferences. Most of them sit at their laptops, or texting on their iphones or Blackberries the whole time anyway. You should see them clamoring around these wireless stations sitting on bean-bag chairs. What’s the point?
Bob: I’m just saying, First Life is the way of the future for business collaboration. You can get started now, or be left in the dust. You decide.
…

‘Day One’ was suggested by Tiessa Montgolfier. The Baron of BardHaven chose ‘SL and RL - Separated at Birth or Art Imitating Life?’ which ended up in Ariadne Korna’s virtual lap and was published at Free Finds For Men. News from BardHaven is hosting Toilets in SL by Eliza Wrigglesworth. ‘Day One’ was originally mixed and matched to appear on avatrian.com, but as they seem to have bailed out, The Baron’s post goes here, and I hope it will be appreciated by many!

Day One

by BardHaven

I have been asked to examine my earliest experiences in Second Life and as I have been here more the three years now, it takes a bit of work to remember that far back. Even now looking back at them they are a smattering of false steps and half measures and compromises and exploratory sex.

Like most people I know, I came to SL because of a woman. I had been in one or another virtual world, with or without pretty pictures, for near on ten years when I stumbled into the beta for The Matrix Online, and spent more than a year playing and creating in that world. At the time, it was a perfect fit for me. Clever storyline, stylish avatars, and guns, guns, guns. Some of the most enjoyable moments I have ever spent online, certainly the most exciting and action-packed were in the closing days of that Beta as the world was destroyed horrifically by a burning virus to make way for the release…the Matrix was rebooted and I was there to watch the servers shut down and the Megacity fold in on itself. Heady days indeed.

I remained with the released version for some time, until role playing dramas become to much for me, and I realized it was time to find an exit strategy. That was about the time one woman I was role playing with left the game suddenly and brutally (at least character wise) and I met…well, I will call her L since that is the initial of the name she took here in SL. We were drawn to one another and spent a great deal of pleasant time speaking and role playing and *cough* other things in avatar form, or as they were called there, Redpills.

The *cough* other things were not always simple, however, as in MXO, one could not actually remove your underwear. Daunting, to be sure. So one would end up in an abandoned virtual building, stripped down to briefs and bra and panties, sitting on a couch next to one another making with the sex talk in IM. Add to this that the animation was a pretty typical nonchalant pose, appearing slightly bored and distracted, not looking at one another…and it was not the most erotic presentation one could find. Plus occasionally a mission would be generated nearby for another character, and you might suddenly find yourself in the middle of a small shooting war or attacked by wandering gang members, while sitting in your underwear on a couch next to a pretty girl who looks like she wants to be somewhere else. It actually reminded me a bit of my Junior Prom.

Eventually we both had had enough of this situation, so L suggested we try out SL since many refugees from MXO had come here. At first I resisted, it made no sense to me. There was no point to SL, no goals, no levels. It was just a massive chat room. However, without me (and without my knowledge, fwiw) she explored SL and came back to tell me it was really nice…and you could have genitals…and whips.

Whips.

She had me from the whips.

I had been very involved in several Adults-Only MUDs and MOOS before Matrix Online, so this seemed to me like the next natural step. I agreed to create a character and have a look around. Inside of a week, she had taken me around, shown me how to buy a shape and hair and decent clothes, bought me my first virtual penis, and soon we were buying land and architecture together, setting up house. Curtains and everything.

Whips. Genitals. Domestication.

And Sex Animations.

Did I ever really have a chance to resist?

The next few weeks are a blur of buying and meeting and dancing and confusions and jealousies and Jesus Christ (don’t ask) and pixilated boot bumping.

When the smoke cleared, L had moved on after a few weeks but would come and go from SL for awhile, under several alts. She may be doing so still for all I know.

I, however, am still the same, still here in SL.

Still here buying and meeting and dancing and getting confused and *avoiding* jealousies (thank god) and boot bumping now and again.

Jesus Christ isn’t involved anymore however. At least not to my knowledge.

Thanks L, for everything…and the whips.

The Baron of Bardhaven: biography

Lord Zealot Benmergui, Baron of BardHaven, Ruffian King of Caledon, Last Defender of the Dark Hope, Keeper of the Shadow that Sings and Magus d’Calamatia Majora was born at the age of 6 in a speeding carriage somewhere on the Italian/Swiss border. His parents, a morbidly sentimental English débutante with a taste for the intellectual and the excommunicated and an elderly Italian nobleman with a weakness for somber ladies and erotic pastry, died in a tragic Mongoose stampede when he was still at school at Eton, leaving him the only heir to the vast holdings of BardHaven.

Embarking on a successful career as an international businessman, adventurer, evangelist and agent provocateur, the young Baron soon was a familar face and community leader in some of the more unusual and disgraceful circles in Europe, Asia and Latin America before returning to the family seat in Mayfair at the legendary Palace of Lost Causes. Since returning to Caledon, he has become well known as a writer, fashion reviewer, gothic savant, betrayer of innocent strumpets and torch singer performing under the name Miss Monique Borgia, the Iron Chanteuse.

Lord Zealot Benmergui’s endeavours and thoughts can be followed at bardhaven.wordpress.com.

An overview of all Second Life Bloggers Mix’n Match Entries can be found here.

Make sure to press ‘Watch in High Quality”

Disclaimer: As far as we know - and official Linden records such as the knowledge base and the Second Life wiki show us - Vinnie Linden never existed. ‘The Death of Vinnie Linden’ has sprung from the brain of Linden Conspiracy Theory artist Crap Mariner. Of course, there’s always a small chance he’s right… . ;)

Keeping in mind my bad, bad, BAD! understanding of the English language, Mr. Mariner was as nice as to release the full story of The Death of Vinnie Linden, as it originally happened:

You never heard of Vinnie Linden? He’s not showing up in search? Of course not. The Linden bury their mistakes. Keep it private and out of the papers. Keep it in the family, Godfather Mitch says. Keep it clean. He wasn’t no M… or Torley… or Robin… or any of the family you hear about. Just a capo… a soldier. An errand-boy, but he was smart. Too smart, I guess. He had plans, dreams.. ideas for Premium accounts, Lindex reform, OpenSpace and void pricing. The casinos, the hookers - do you think they were really gone? He was gonna blow the lid off the whole shebang, Z’s cooked numbers, Anshe trafficking in cheap Chinese sculpties, rigged snail races… All sorts of stuff. Even the truth about Bay City and Nautilus. He worked out a deal… five to ten in the cornfield, come out with a new face in the World Of Warcraft Protection Program. Tat “The Heart” Nino and Prokofy were waiting on the other side, but he missed the dropoff. It’s a shame, really… he had such a bright future, now his partner’s a widow and his three alts don’t have a primary account to grow up having around. I’m sitting at my desk, and I get a package… it’s a seven seas fish wrapped in the Second Life Herald. Pixleen asks about the smell. I say: “Now, he’s holding office hours with the fishes.”

That leaves you to figure out what’s this all about tier, three grand-fathered children and a pair of shoes! ;)