Google Prepping A Second Life Competitor?

Rumors of a Google powered virtual world based on Google Earth surfaced in January; today there is word that Google may be testing their virtual world at Arizona State University (ASU).

According to Google Operating System, ASU students have the opportunity to test a new product “that will be publicly launched later this year” by “a major Internet company” that is related to social networking, 3D modeling and video games. The questionnaire attached to the application process asks would be testers if they have a Gmail account, and if not would they be willing to get one. The product’s name is shown as “My World.”

Google’s Sketchup service already provides the tech to do 3D modeling and could also be used to create avatars.

We know for certain now that Google has big plans for social networking, from SocialStream to Google’s planned November 5 launch of the mother of all open social networking platforms. Whether the planned service will be a true Second Life competitor is still to be seen, however I suspect that if Google is prepping a virtual world it will be closer to IBM’s Virtual World chat platform than Second Life. To deliver a full UGC world is a not an easy step where a basic 3D world which builds on Google Earth, SketchUp, and existing Google social networking platforms including Orkut would seem more likely.
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Eye Candy + Google = Groovle

Ontario based Groovle has a such a simple business model, it’s worthy of asking “why didn’t I think of that?” Groove uses Google Custom search in conjunction with picture hosting to offer custom Google search pages.

Users have two options in terms of how a Groovle page looks; they can either select from a list of preexisting pages or upload their own picture. Groovle offers an extensive variety of ready to use pages in categories including celebrities, nature, space, and sport.

Groovle makes its money from the search results generated by Google Custom Search, and given that those results are delivered by Google the business runs on a low cost, low barrier to succeed model. Sports fans, celebrity lovers, and anyone looking for a basic search oriented (ie one without widgets) custom start page who don’t want to create one themselves will like Groovle.

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SpiralFrog: Free Music Alive And Hopping

Remember SpiralFrog that free music download service that announced itself nearly a year ago? Well, after slowly releasing invites to Canadians, we received a private beta invitation.

SpiralFrog originally made a splash when they sealed a deal with Universal BMG to give away free downloads of some of their songs in exchange for a share of on-site ad revenue. Later they closed a deal with EMI and have since added a bunch of smaller labels totaling over 700,000 songs. However, now we know a little more about how their free system works.

Songs on SpiralFrog are not ad-supported through interstitial advertising or free in the sense that you can bring them anywhere. Instead, you get DRMed songs (WMA) leased to you for a free 30 day membership (or you can buy on Amazon). You can renew your membership, and the lease to play your songs, by answering survey questions (# concerts per year, how you discover music, etc). All that data helps SpiralFrog know what kind of ads to serve on the site.

To keep the whole system secure, they’ve locked down the download process end to end DRM controls. First you have to get a download manager, and then ensure you have Windows Media Player 9.0 or up. The system is kind of annoying and only works on Windows machines since it uses Microsoft DRM. Although, Microsoft DRM has already been cracked. The DRM requirement also means the songs only play through Windows Media Player, making them unportable. Unlike other DRM setups, though, there doesn’t appear to be a limit to the number of computers you can download to as long as you set SpiralFrog up on them.

Once the system is in place, you can search for artists and download their songs/videos individually. The songs are queued in a download manager and stored locally by artist and album in your SpiralFrog folder. The system seems to have intentionally been crippled so you view more advertising, with downloads happening one at a time and only while on the site. Using the site, I was able to download a bunch of songs and play them with no problem, but other early beta user have had trouble.

I don’t know if SpiralFrog will be able to sustain their business off of on-site advertising and affiliate music sales. A lot of other services are simply going DRM free, not download free. Blogmusik also recently went legit in France, but the US courts and music industry are a lot harder to sway. However, limiting the lease time on the songs means they can continuously tweak what hoops their users need to hop through to keep playing the music they download. For now it may be a simple option if you want a (legal) source of free tunes.