br /What it doesbr /br /A solution that has just surfaced, sMeet can be best defined as a 3D world that can be easily joined by anyone. This virtual environment includes live communication and events that can be attended by users. br brThis solution is actually web-based, and it is available both to Mac and PC users. Registration comes at no cost, and the same goes for basic usage. Some premium services are also available, and in order to have access to them you can buy what the site terms “sMeet Coins”. br brOnce you have registered, you will be able to create your avatar and start interacting with others in your social network either by text chat or by using your telephone. The actual volume users hear each other depends upon the distance in the virtual world, and up to 70 users per room are taken into account. br brFurthermore, worlds that are sponsored by different brands are featured, and through these worlds it is possible to access each sponsor’s website directly. br brIt is safe to say that sMeet is going to spark the interest of those who are always looking for new ways to communicate over the web. If you fall into that category, you are advised to follow the link that is provided and see if sMeet clicks with you or not.br /br /Some questionsbr /br /What are the premium services on offer? How much do they cost?br /br /Why it might be a killerbr /br /Any development in the field of virtual communication is certain to attract people the world over.br /br /In their own wordsbr /br /“sMeet is your 3D world of entertainment and live events, where you meet your real-world, get to know new people and have fun together. sMeet combines virtual 3D environments with live communications and entertainment functionality into an innovative mixture, creating a world of rich experiences for you and your friends (social network).”br /br /Link: a href='http://us.smeet.com'http://us.smeet.com/abr /Our Review: a href='http://www.killerstartups.com/Social-Networking/us-smeet-com-meet-your-friends-in-3d'http://www.killerstartups.com/Social-Networking/us-smeet-com-meet-your-friends-in-3d/abr /br / nbsp;div class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/killerstartups/BkQV?a=pZY2gmfp"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/killerstartups/BkQV?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/killerstartups/BkQV?a=lIEuIQ4L"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/killerstartups/BkQV?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/killerstartups/BkQV?a=FUQ8vlyL"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/killerstartups/BkQV?i=FUQ8vlyL" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/killerstartups/BkQV?a=3HPeJDYd"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/killerstartups/BkQV?i=3HPeJDYd" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/killerstartups/BkQV?a=qzuPFRIq"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/killerstartups/BkQV?d=43" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/killerstartups/BkQV?a=ld3gkPc6"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/killerstartups/BkQV?i=ld3gkPc6" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/killerstartups/BkQV/~4/e-PSPRs9lpg" height="1" width="1"/

p—bTrion and Sci Fi staff up forthcoming game/TV project/b : MMO and virtual world developer a href="http://www.trionworld.com/index.php" title="Trion World Network"Trion World Network/a and The Sci Fi Channel are building out the team for their a href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-investors-pump-1485-million-into-12-virtual-worlds-companies-in-q3" title="as yet unnamed videogame/TV show hybrid"as yet unnamed videogame/TV show hybrid/a: Blizzard Entertainment and Carbine Studios vet Kevin Beardslee will serve as senior development director, and TV writer Peter Egan will pen the first episode. a href="http://www.trionworld.com/news14.php" title="Release"Release/a. /p p —bWorld of Warcraft's new sales record/b : Activision (a href="http://finance.paidcontent.org/paidcontent?Page=QUOTETicker=ATVI" class="ticker" title="ATVI"NSDQ: ATVI/a) Blizzard's money-maker continues to live up to the hype—a href="http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath/" title="Wrath of the Lich King"Wrath of the Lich King/a, the latest installment of World of Warcraft (WoW) bsold 2.8 million copies worldwide in the first 24 hours of its release/b. At about $40 a pop, that means Lich King could have clocked in about $112 million in sales on its first day, though that's not counting retailer discounts or the $70 Collector's Edition (that comes with extra branded merchandise). And let's not forget the residual income from the game's $15 monthly subscription fee. The publisher says Lich King broke the first day sales record for PC games (which was set almost two years ago by the first WoW expansion, a href="http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/burningcrusade/" title="The Burning Crusade"The Burning Crusade/a). a href="http://investor.activision.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=349190" title="Release"Release/a. /p p —bPublishers adopt Live Gamer's upgraded virtual transaction platform/b : Acclaim Games, GoPets and IAC's Instant Action.com have all adopted Live Gamer Exhange, an upgraded virtual goods transaction platform from in-game commerce tech firm a href="http://www.livegamer.com/index.php" title="Live Gamer"Live Gamer/a. The new platform lets players buy, sell and trade items like gold and other virtual merchandise using real-world money. a href="http://www.livegamer.com/014news.php" title="Release"Release/a. /p p iMore after the jump. /i /pp—bRealNetworks (a href="http://finance.paidcontent.org/paidcontent?Page=QUOTETicker=RNWK" class="ticker" title="RNWK"NSDQ: RNWK/a) relaunches GameHouse/b : RealNetworks has relaunched its casual games hub a href="http://www.gamehouse.com/" title="GameHouse "GameHouse /a and the available payment options: including unlimited play for $20/month and a "club" membership with discounts. The site also features a free daily game giveaway. Of course, there are a glut of casual gaming sites, so anything a single one can do to stand out is a plus. a href="http://www.realnetworks.com/company/press/releases/2008/gamehouse.html" title="Release"Release/a. /p p —bGauging the influence of in-game ads/b : Dynamic in-game ads influence 14 percent of electronics purchases in consumers aged 18-34, beating out satellite radio and outdoor billboard units. The stats from BIG Research and the National Retail foundation may help electronics advertisers decide which "experimental" channels they should stick with in the midst of budget cutbacks. a href="http://adage.com/article?article_id=132742" title="Via AdAge."Via AdAge./a br / /p p!-- iMark Logic Digital Publishing Summit, Thursday November 6, Westin Times Square. Insight and perspective from Outsell, Gilbane, Simon Schuster, BusinessWeek.com, more. Evening cocktail reception. Cost is complimentary. a href="http://content.adbureau.net/accipiter/adclick/CID=000010cb0000000000000000/SITE=PC_US/AAMSZ=PREMB_NEWS/relocate=http://marklogicdps.eventbrite.com/"Register now!/a/i --/p pa href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?a=Ytl95I"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?i=Ytl95I" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=iYBVN"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=iYBVN" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=HMO4N"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=HMO4N" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=VJIon"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=VJIon" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=MAwXN"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=MAwXN" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=RjwDN"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=RjwDN" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/pcorg/~4/461342680" height="1" width="1"/

div class="image"a href="http://pixhost.ws/avaxhome/big_show.php?/avaxhome/53/cf/0009cf53.jpeg" target="_blank"img src="http://pixhost.ws/avaxhome/53/cf/0009cf53_medium.jpeg" id="external_img_642899"//a/divbr/ div class="center"b Drew Smith " Food Industry and the Internet: Making Real Money in the Virtual World" /bbr/ Wiley-Blackwell | 2001-08-29 | ISBN: 063205753X | 232 pages | PDF | 1,4 MB /div

via Eurogamer


Sony will be sending out hundreds of thousands PlayStation Home beta invites today.

This coincides with the launch of v1.0 of the virtual world, according to TedTheDog (he's probably not a dog) on the European PlayStation forums.

Furthermore, next Thursday "another larger batch of invitations will be sent".

Those not invited - perhaps they're not loyal enough - are told an open beta will "not be far behind".

The PlayStation Home update brings a meaty list of changes to the table, such as a tutorial, background downloading, more dance moves, reintroduction of regional travel, and a club support system.

The full list of alterations can be found on the European PlayStation forum.

Alternatively, you virtually wander into our PlayStation Home gamepage for our thoughts on the closed beta.

Google said it would shut down Lively, its hree-dimensional virtual experience website by year end to focus more on its core search, advertisements and applications business.

div class="rxbodyfield"p class="ArticleBody" page="1"New leaders arrive, old ones leave -- sometimes by the back door in the dead of night. And so it goes with this week's quiz, as the country gets to know a new president elect, a longtime senator says adios, and Yahoo employees wonder who will wear the crown (or the dunce cap) after Jerry Yang departs. Also on tap: A print magazine and a virtual world die, while a dead ISP and an extinct mammal rise from the grave. Have you got your finger on the tech pulse? Prove it by acing this week's quiz. Correct answers are worth 10 points, and no looking at your neighbor's DNA for clues. Ready?/pp align="right"a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/idg.us.info.rss/news;pos=imu;tile=6;sz=336x280;skey=patch_management;pkey=security;ord=123456789?" target="_blank" /img src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/idg.us.info.rss/news;pos=imu;tile=6;sz=336x280;skey=patch_management;pkey=security;ord=123456789?" width="336" height="280" border="0" alt="" align="right"//a/pp class="ArticleBody" page="1"b1. In a move that surprised absolutely no one, Jerry Yang is stepping down as Yahoo's CEO but remaining at the company in another capacity. What will be his new title?/b/pp class="ArticleBody" page="1"ba. Chief Operating Officerbr/ b. Chief Vacillating Officerbr/ c. Chief Yahoobr/ d. Chief Sitting Duck/b/pp class="ArticleBody" page="1"ba href="http://www.infoworld.com/tools/quiz/news/NQ20081121-news-quiz.php" class="regularArticleU"Take the InfoWorld news quiz/a/b/p/divbr style=clear: both;/ a href=http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=8ecbf4aa8e8f1d511428364d1ea76002p=1img alt= style=border: 0; border=0 src=http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=8ecbf4aa8e8f1d511428364d1ea76002p=1//a img src=http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=8ecbf4aa8e8f1d511428364d1ea76002 style=display: none; border=0 height=1 width=1 alt=/

(Reuters) - Google Inc said it would shut down its three-dimensional virtual experience website by year end to focus more on its core search, advertisements and applications business.div class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/technologyNews?a=wik68x1g"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/technologyNews?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/technologyNews?a=7pP46hgR"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/technologyNews?i=7pP46hgR" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/technologyNews?a=kbwiexWj"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/technologyNews?i=kbwiexWj" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/reuters/technologyNews/~4/eqOOXsoVTbU" height="1" width="1"/

(Reuters) - Google Inc said it would shut down its three-dimensional virtual experience website by year end to focus more on its core search, advertisements and applications business.div class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/Reuters/InternetNews?a=PMGwwJMx"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/Reuters/InternetNews?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/Reuters/InternetNews?a=fXqFKDWJ"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/Reuters/InternetNews?i=fXqFKDWJ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/Reuters/InternetNews?a=KWseuoIt"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/Reuters/InternetNews?i=KWseuoIt" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Reuters/InternetNews/~4/weFEyZ23fKs" height="1" width="1"/

Ce n’est plus un mystère, je bosse dans le domaine des univers virtuels.

Aujourd’hui Lavoisier a une fois de plus raison, sa loi s’applique aujourd’hui. (oui j’ai pas séché tous mes cours de physique au lycée).

Lively va fermer ses portes. Lively était LE monde virtuel de Google, la pme californienne, qui devait mettre tout le monde d’accord et transformer les internautes en avatars sociables. Après quelques mois en ligne, le succès n’étant pas là, Google fait preuve de raison et décide de débrancher la prise. Les raisons de l’échec sont simples : pas beaucoup d’interactivité, peu de place pour l’ugc et un manque total d’originalité. La messe est dite.

Pendant ce temps dans les caves secrètes d’Orange, pme Française, quelques ingénieurs bossaient sur Solipsis un monde virtuel qui s’appuie sur le p2p pour booster ses performances. Solipsis est intéressant à plusieurs niveaux, d’abord il est OpenSource du coup il attaque de plein fouet l’industrie des mondes virtuels qui base une partie de son business model sur la vente de la technologie ou la location de serveurs.
Autre originalité, le support du p2p, pour faire simple, lorsque vous vous trouvez dans une salle, plutôt que d’aller chercher les éléments qui la compose sur le serveur distant, vous les récupérez dans le cache de vos voisins, du coup moins d’aller/retour entre le client et le serveur. L’avantage est simple, on renverse les rêgles actuelles de gestion de la foule, plus il y a de personnes sur une grille (espace numérique que l’on peut apparenter à une parcelle de terrain dans la vraie vie) plus l’ensemble est fluide.

Solipsis est dispo en téléchargement en version Beta, uniquement pour Windows ici

Un univers virtuel de plus mais à surveiller par son ouverture et sa capacité à sauver les ours polaires

Une vidéo pour vous donner un aperçu :

Solipsis from solipsis_consortium on Vimeo.

Ce n’est plus un mystère, je bosse dans le domaine des univers virtuels.

Aujourd’hui Lavoisier a une fois de plus raison, sa loi s’applique aujourd’hui. (oui j’ai pas séché tous mes cours de physique au lycée).

Lively va fermer ses portes. Lively était LE monde virtuel de Google, la pme californienne, qui devait mettre tout le monde d’accord et transformer les internautes en avatars sociables. Après quelques mois en ligne, le succès n’étant pas là, Google fait preuve de raison et décide de débrancher la prise. Les raisons de l’échec sont simples : pas beaucoup d’interactivité, peu de place pour l’ugc et un manque total d’originalité. La messe est dite.

Pendant ce temps dans les caves secrètes d’Orange, pme Française, quelques ingénieurs bossaient sur Solipsis un monde virtuel qui s’appuie sur le p2p pour booster ses performances. Solipsis est intéressant à plusieurs niveaux, d’abord il est OpenSource du coup il attaque de plein fouet l’industrie des mondes virtuels qui base une partie de son business model sur la vente de la technologie ou la location de serveurs.
Autre originalité, le support du p2p, pour faire simple, lorsque vous vous trouvez dans une salle, plutôt que d’aller chercher les éléments qui la compose sur le serveur distant, vous les récupérez dans le cache de vos voisins, du coup moins d’aller/retour entre le client et le serveur. L’avantage est simple, on renverse les rêgles actuelles de gestion de la foule, plus il y a de personnes sur une grille (espace numérique que l’on peut apparenter à une parcelle de terrain dans la vraie vie) plus l’ensemble est fluide.

Solipsis est dispo en téléchargement en version Beta, uniquement pour Windows ici

Un univers virtuel de plus mais à surveiller par son ouverture et sa capacité à sauver les ours polaires

Une vidéo pour vous donner un aperçu :

Solipsis from solipsis_consortium on Vimeo.

Ce n’est plus un mystère, je bosse dans le domaine des univers virtuels.

Aujourd’hui Lavoisier a une fois de plus raison, sa loi s’applique aujourd’hui. (oui j’ai pas séché tous mes cours de physique au lycée).

Lively va fermer ses portes. Lively était LE monde virtuel de Google, la pme californienne, qui devait mettre tout le monde d’accord et transformer les internautes en avatars sociables. Après quelques mois en ligne, le succès n’étant pas là, Google fait preuve de raison et décide de débrancher la prise. Les raisons de l’échec sont simples : pas beaucoup d’interactivité, peu de place pour l’ugc et un manque total d’originalité. La messe est dite.

Pendant ce temps dans les caves secrètes d’Orange, pme Française, quelques ingénieurs bossaient sur Solipsis un monde virtuel qui s’appuie sur le p2p pour booster ses performances. Solipsis est intéressant à plusieurs niveaux, d’abord il est OpenSource du coup il attaque de plein fouet l’industrie des mondes virtuels qui base une partie de son business model sur la vente de la technologie ou la location de serveurs.
Autre originalité, le support du p2p, pour faire simple, lorsque vous vous trouvez dans une salle, plutôt que d’aller chercher les éléments qui la compose sur le serveur distant, vous les récupérez dans le cache de vos voisins, du coup moins d’aller/retour entre le client et le serveur. L’avantage est simple, on renverse les rêgles actuelles de gestion de la foule, plus il y a de personnes sur une grille (espace numérique que l’on peut apparenter à une parcelle de terrain dans la vraie vie) plus l’ensemble est fluide.

Solipsis est dispo en téléchargement en version Beta, uniquement pour Windows ici

Un univers virtuel de plus mais à surveiller par son ouverture et sa capacité à sauver les ours polaires

Une vidéo pour vous donner un aperçu :

Solipsis from solipsis_consortium on Vimeo.

p iMountain View, Calif./i - Google a href="http://finance.dmwmedia.com/dmwmedia?Page=QUOTEamp;Ticker=GOOG" target="_blank"(NASD: GOOG)/a has decided to shutter its Lively online virtual world at the end of the year, saying it wants quot;to ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business.quot;pa href="http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2008/11/20/google-shutter-%2526quot%3Blively%2526quot%3B-virtual-world-experiment"read more/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/dmwmedia?a=LeZNN"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/dmwmedia?i=LeZNN" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/dmwmedia?a=vBt3n"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/dmwmedia?i=vBt3n" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/dmwmedia?a=WCXzn"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/dmwmedia?i=WCXzn" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/dmwmedia?a=tMP1N"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/dmwmedia?i=tMP1N" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/dmwmedia?a=J0zKn"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/dmwmedia?i=J0zKn" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dmwmedia/~4/460182237" height="1" width="1"/

pimg class="float_right" src="/~~/f?id=4874d7a1796c7aa60049d72dmaxX=293maxY=205" border="0" alt="lively.JPG" title="lively.JPG" width="293" height="205" /Less than five months after launch, Google (GOOG) is a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/that-was-quick-google-kills-virtual-world-lively-goog-"shutting down virtual world Lively/a. The a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/lively-no-more.html"reason/a it's going away: It's useless to Google's search ad business. Which is why the company said it's dumping Lively to "focus more on our core search, ads and apps business."/p pBut that doesn't mean that Google couldn't have built a decent virtual world if it wanted to. If Google wasn't under the gun by a tanking economy, and if they had real incentive to build a virtual world, here's how they could have made Lively more successful:/p ol listrongHold up the launch of Windows- and Internet Explorer-only Lively until it runs on Firefox and the Mac./strong A disproportionate number of the early-adopter community uses the Mac and/or the Firefox web browser. If you throw a Hail Mary like "everyone get avatars and move into 3D chat," you need the Firefox and Mac users on board right away. (This goes for Google Chrome too, the company should port it to the Mac ASAP.)/li listrongScrub the virtual world completely free of sex and violence./strong In Lively, you could use the "crush" command to make an anvil fall out of the sky and wallop another user's avatar, or use "kick" to hit someone in the groin. It was funny. Actually, it was so funny a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/7/google-s-lively-is-just-like-second-life-no-one-s-there-but-perverts-and-griefers-goog-"all anyone did in Lively was try "punch" or "choke" anyone in range/a. And some of Lively's avatar designs -- especially the anthropomorphic animals -- were creepy enough, even without random furries always trying to beat you up or romance you./li listrongShowcase what can be done with the technology./strong Here Google made the same mistake with Lively that Linden Lab made with Second Life -- it put its virtual world technology out into the public domain and thought its mission ended there. It doesn't. Google should have hosted its own Lively rooms and held events in them, encouraging new users to try out the service. Lively rooms would have been a great tie-in with other Google services like Orkut or Google Groups -- but Google was content to let Lively flounder alone at lively.com./li listrongMake Lively an extension of Google's advertising platform/strong. It would have been relatively easy for Google to program Lively to include advertisements piped in from elsewhere on the web, so a virtual room contains a space a few hundred pixels square that rotates through an ad in Google's inventory. The company could then split revenue with any website that hosts and gets traffic to an ad-enabled Lively room -- just like it does with flat web pages via AdSense. There's probably only pennies involved, especially in this ad climate. And good luck finding advertisers who prefer avatars to real customers. But Lively could have been much more likely to propagate if people had financial incentive to use it./li /ol pOf course, Google did none of these things. The point: Watchers of the fledgling virtual worlds industry -- which raised a href="http://www.virtualworldsmanagement.com/2008/q3.html"almost half a billion dollars/a in investment just in the first three quarters of this year -- shouldn't read Google's departure from the game as a negative verdict on the virtual worlds idea as a whole. Google didn't even really try./p pstrongSee Also:/strongbr /a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/that-was-quick-google-kills-virtual-world-lively-goog-"That Was Quick: Google Kills Virtual World 'Lively'/abr /a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/7/google-s-lively-is-just-like-second-life-no-one-s-there-but-perverts-and-griefers-goog-"Google's Lively Is Just Like Second Life -- No One's There But Perverts And Griefers/abr /a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/7/google-no-sex-in-second-life-killer-lively-goog-"Google: No Sex in Second Life-Killer Lively/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/FS1ggcHEQwJGFTT_ZBmrcFBaArY/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/FS1ggcHEQwJGFTT_ZBmrcFBaArY/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=xwdkqqI2"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=xwdkqqI2" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=S5aUI9CV"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=Wzg3dxfW"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=80" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=5jaj06tj"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=5jaj06tj" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=v49baHgr"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=131" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=nLs3hMiZ"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=336" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=89cIT4g8"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=OZf6L5p7"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=50" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~4/SL9eoEg_cfw" height="1" width="1"/

Lively, a virtual reality service from Google Inc., is dying. The company plans to shut down the service at the end of the year, reflecting Lively's inability to stand out from the rest of the virtual reality crowd. The pack of faux worlds is led by Second Life, where people deploy animated alter egos known as avatars to pursue digital fantasies.div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?a=vL0YN"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?i=vL0YN" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?a=OuNQn"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?i=OuNQn" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?a=AsMfn"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?i=AsMfn" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ibtimes/tech/~4/460037908" height="1" width="1"/

This article is part of the Open Web Awards, an open, international contest for the best websites and services.

Since kicking off the voting round of the Open Web Awards yesterday, we’ve seen nearly 10,000 votes cast across 26 different categories. In the Mainstream Social Networks category, Twitter has the early lead, but has some tough competition from last year’s winners, Facebook and Netlog. With voting open until November 30th, perhaps one of these contenders can make a run for the award:

Dotblu – A social network geared primarily towards teens, where users compete in various games to earn virtual currency.

Facebook – Became the most popular social network globally this year. Recently launched a major re-design.

Fastpitch – Social network for business professionals with a focus on gaining “karma” through contributing to the site.

Friendfeed – Aggregator of activities from dozens of different social networks including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and Del.icio.us.

Koornk – Twitter-like service offered to international audiences in 5 different languages.

Multiply – Social network that likes to focus on “real world” relationships. Traffic more than doubled this year.

MyHeritage – Lets families work together to build an interactve family tree.

MySpace – World’s second largest social network, recently launched MySpace Music with free streaming tracks from the major labels.

Netlog – One of Europe’s biggest social networking sites. Recently launched support for OpenSocial applications.

Platinumlounge – Social network with a focus on entertainment news and nightlife.

Sharenow – Social network that includes unlimited file sharing with friends.

Smeet – Web-based virtual world where each user gets their own avatar and can communicate with others via text or voice.

Squidoo – Experts create pages about their favorite topics and earn revenue.

Twitter – Microblogging tool that lets users post 140 character updates about their activities. Grew rapidly in 2008.

VOTE OFTEN: One Vote Per Category Per Day

Now it’s time to vote for your favorite Mainstream Social Network in the first of two voting rounds. You can vote for one company per day until midnight on November 30th.

Mashable Open Web Awards

Feel free to embed this widget on your own blog or website by clicking the “Grab This” button! For a timeline, rules and information on our 100 blog partners, please visit the Open Web Awards site.

Top Tip For Nominees

You got through? Congratulations! Did you know you can create a custom version of our voting widget above to post to your company blog or website? Just visit the Open Web Awards Widget Creator and check the box to preset a category or company. This means your fans only need to enter an email address to vote - simple!

Start Canvassing for YOUR Candidate!

Want others to vote for your favorite site? Of course you do! Why not leave a comment here and on any of our international partner blogs encouraging other readers to add their support? The more you promote your candidate across these blogs, the more likely it is for your site to proceed to the finals!

OWA Sponsors Love The Web

The Open Web Awards is made possible by our sponsors. By supporting the Open Web Awards, these companies reward and encourage innovative web technologies. We can’t thank them enough for sharing our passion: building great web companies.

Platinum Partner

“PartnerUp brings small business and social networking together to create a community where entrepreneurs find the people, resources and information to grow their businesses.”

Gold Sponsors

“iStockphoto is the world’s leading image market and a revenue-sharing social network. Browse 3.5 million images and videos starting at $1 or become a contributor.”

“With Quintura’s advanced visual-based search and analytics solution, content publishers can increase site usage while creating new ad revenues”

Prize Sponsor

“Infinite and Instant, Zazzle is the only on-demand retail platform for consumers and major brands, offering billions of retail quality, one-of-a-kind products, most of which are produced within 24 hours.”

---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:

Social Networking Awards - Vote for Your Favorite Social Bookmarking Site
Social Networking Awards - Vote For Your Favorite Mobile Social Network
Open Web Awards Voting: 50,000+ Votes Cast
Social Networking Awards - Vote for Your Favorite Social Shopping Site
Social Networking Awards - Vote for Your Favorite Startpage
Social Networking Awards - Vote for Your Favorite Sporting Social Network
Social Networking Awards - Vote for Your Favorite Photo-Sharing Site

pimg src="http://lifehacker.com/assets/resources/2008/07/livelylogo.gif" /If you've been enjoying Google's 3D virtual experience Livelymdash;which they released a href="http://lifehacker.com/398148/google-launches-lively-in+browser-virtual-world"in July/amdash;we've got some bad news. By the end of December, a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/lively-no-more.html"Lively will be no more/a, according to the Official Google Blog. Anyone here care? Commiserate in the comments. [a href="http://kotaku.com/5093891/google-kills-its-second-life+like-lively"via/a]/p br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=c2c8a7897b644fe01f9ddafd9733772cp=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=c2c8a7897b644fe01f9ddafd9733772cp=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=c2c8a7897b644fe01f9ddafd9733772c" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=Qdj92Ytt"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=Kzm7yabX"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=QfXHxXHJ"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=QfXHxXHJ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=DV78Zuxp"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=DV78Zuxp" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http:/