Lively, Google's virtual world, is opening its platform to third party developers. It's hope: to become a portal for casual games. VentureBeat talks with Lively creative director Kevin Hanna, who gives the example of walking into a room with classic arcade machines and having the option of playing any of those games. This could eventually include larger scale games, "allowing users and developers to build games on top of the architecture," he says. Lively competes with a variety of virtual worlds where users personify themselves through digital avatars. Some of the most popular are IMVU, and the 2D chat …

In his new book, "Click: What Millions of People are Doing Online and Why it Matters," Hitwise General Manager of Global Research Bill Tancer reveals that social networking sites are the Internet's biggest attraction, surpassing pornography and underscoring a seismic shift in the way people communicate. "There are some patterns to our Internet use that we tend to repeat very specifically and predictably, from diet searches, to prom dresses, to what we do around the holidays," Tancer told Reuters. He conducted his research by analyzing consumers' searching habits One of the biggest shifts in Web use he found over …

In a blog post, Hal Varian, Google's chief economist, countered growing criticism of the search giant's proposed partnership with Yahoo by pointing out that Google AdWords prices are determined by the market demand for certain keywords. In particular, Varian took issue with a study from SearchIgnite claiming that the cost of buying keywords on Yahoo would jump by an average of 22%. "The report fails to acknowledge that ad prices are not set by Yahoo or Google, but by advertisers themselves, through the auction process," Varian said. "Since advertisers set prices themselves via an auction, the prices must ultimately …

T-Mobile USA plans to begin selling the first smart phone powered by Goggle's new mobile software late next month, according to people familiar with the matter, facing off against Apple Inc.'s iPhone and Research In Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry with a device that blends aspects of both. T-Mobile USA will begin selling the first Google-powered smartphones by the end of next month, The Wall Street Journal reports. The phones are being built by Taiwanese manufacturer HTC, which expects to ship 600,000 to 700,000 units of the new phone, dubbed the "Dream", by the end of this year. That target far exceeded …

At the beginning of the credit crisis more than a year ago now, some pundits claimed that tech stocks would be immune to an economic downturn. After all, large techs provide safe harbor from credit derivatives and the soaring price of oil and other commodities. They also tend to have stores of cash, little debt and substantial international businesses that benefit from a weak dollar. Of course, it hasn't turned out that way. Large techs like Google, HP, and Dell have gotten hammered on the stock market this year. And much of the sell-off has been recent, thanks to the …

What dos the failure of Lehman Brothers and the $50 billion sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America mean for the technology industry, Cnet's Stefanie Olsen asks? Venture capital and finance experts claim that the uncertain financial climate at the nation's largest securities firms will most likely translate into fewer IPOs, and slow the process for mergers and acquisitions. Yesterday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by just over 500 points (a 4.4% drop), capping the worst investor sell-off since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001. The precipitous drop in investor confidence has been tied mostly to the …