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.

Lively is dead. Long live newlively? originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 03 Jan 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.