I like to think I’m an okay gamer. I’ve been playing video games since the Atari 2600, so I can move fairly well within virtual worlds. I can Crippling Slash enemy monks in Guild Wars just as well as I can hoverboard with friendly girls in There.

Maybe that’s why my expectations of Google Lively might seem a little high. Given that games are bigger than movies, however, those expectations could soon become merely average.

Frankly, I’m not impressed with Google’s first stab at a virtual world. Don’t get me wrong; I’m as big a Google fan as the next guy. They are the kings of all forms of aynchronous communication, from search to apps to ads to video.

Synchronous communication, however, is still too fast for their data mining and ad contextualization systems. That’s why GTalk never caught on, that’s why YouTube does not have live video, and that’s why Lively fails to captivate me.

The attempt at a gamelike world, coupled with the attempt at a Web mashup, creates something that’s a jack of both and a master of neither. It’s limited, it’s slow, it’s unresponsive, and it’s counterintuitive. It’s not chatty enough for chat, and it’s not game enough for gaming.

Maybe I shouldn’t expect so much from Lively yet, since it’s still in beta. Maybe Lively will finally offer the perfect fusion of the Web and the metaverse. Maybe all that will happen down the line.

Until then, I’m playing real MMOs.

Post from: EveryJoe

Google Lively Does Not Make Me Lively

The bad news is that I’ve given away my first batch of six invitations to Digg founder Kevin Rose’s flexible yet elegant new IM service, Pownce. The good news is that I just got six more. If you want an invitation, post a comment here with your email address. First come, first served.

The even better news is they’ve just announced development of a public API. This thing’s only going to get even more flexible. Pownce away, baby.

Post from: EveryJoe

More Pownce Invitations! API Coming Soon!

I’m giving away six invitations to Digg founder Kevin Rose’s new IM service, Pownce. Think Twitter on steroids: you can send text, links, files, and events to the whole world, all your friends, groups of your friends, or any one of your friends. Jeremiah Owyang has a great collection of reviews here.

If you want an invitation, post a comment here with your email address. First come, first served. If you’re lucky, we’ll Pownce each other. :)

Post from: EveryJoe

Pownce Invitations!

I’ve gone through security settings and add-ons to see if anything was being blocked and didn’t see anything that I’m aware of specifically.

Anyone have any ideas (other than telling me to switch back to Firefox)?

Post from: EveryJoe

Google Talk Follow-up

I’ve been getting this error now for almost a week. I’ve talked to other friends that are using Google Talk embedded in Gmail and they aren’t experiencing the same issues?

Trying to figure out of it’s just me or my computer. Don’t think so since it’s happening on both my personal desktop and my business laptop.

Sure would be nice if the’d fix it though. Does anyone know if Google Talk works better now with Trillian? I had it working once before, but it was just too wonky then as well.

Post from: EveryJoe

Google Talk Embedded in Gmail Difficulties

Colbert Low has an interesting post at Profy.com about the possibility of Google purchasing Plaxo. Although it came from left-field for me, I think it makes plenty of sense. Google is always looking for more potential customers and “eyes” for advertising dollars. Plaxo is a great and simple service, and the one thing it might need to improve is just a big “trusted” name behind them.

With Plaxo’s web savvy users’ database of 15M, it should be a great bargain for Google or any other party interested in acquiring them for advertising purposes. But let’s just wait and see what happens in another 6 months’ time.

Interesting for sure, we’ll see what happens in 6 months, or maybe less.

Source: Will Google Buy Plaxo

Post from: EveryJoe

Google to Purchase Plaxo

Why is it that AOL mail, or specifically my AIM mail account, continues to be a spam magnet? I don’t provide my e-mail address for this account to anyone, I never include it on web forms or on web pages. 3 of 5 messages from my account above are sent specifically to my AOL/AIM address, the other two I don’t even appear in the recipients field.

AOL could do lots of things to improve their services, a major one would be cracking down on SPAM for their customers.

The 2nd e-mail above is a blatant phishing scam. I would think at the very least AOL could look for mentions of their own name spoofed in e-mails that also contained the words “security” “account” and other targeted phrases. How is it that Google does this so well with their mail.

Post from: EveryJoe

AOL Mail Still a Spam Magnet

My only problem is all my bookmarks that weren’t already in a specific folder have gone bye-bye somewhere.

All of my bookmarks highlighted over there in the screen grab are completely missing from the bookmarks drop-down that used to be available from the toolbar.

This is a real pain because the reason they weren’t in a folder was because these were the bookmarks I used EVERY DAY, MULTIPLE TIMES A DAY. I didn’t want them buried in a folder. Now they’re nowhere to be found.

Anyone else tried this out? What’s your experience? I’m pretty close to uninstalling the beta toolbar and going back to previous version. I need those frequently used bookmarks in my toolbar.

The reason I liked them in the toolbar was because they were always available from any computer I logged into on the internet. Nice feature! Don’t take that away from me.

On an additional note, the Google toolbar has upgraded some of their features and they have a wealth of new buttons you can add to your toolbar. Nicely done Google, nicely done. Since I lost my Gmail bookmark from my Yahoo! toolbar, I guess it’s pretty obvious that I should just put the button on my Google Toolbar don’t you think?

Post from: EveryJoe

Yahoo Bookmarks Quick Review

It looks like AOL’s “OpenRide” software is coming together nicely. Has anyone used it?

Let me know.

Post from: EveryJoe

AOL OpenRide

Would you rather also have GTalk running as a separate application, or do you like just using it embedded within Gmail? I prefer having it embedded instead of having a separate application running in my task tray.

Actually my IM preference is Trillian by Cerulean Studios. I’ve loved that application ever since I heard about it. It especially came in handy when I used to be signed onto AIM and MSN with multiple screen names. At that point in time I had 6 screen names signed in at once and Trillian made it super-simple to manage all the buddy lists in a single unit.

Post from: EveryJoe

Google Advertising GTalk