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Vincent Padois, head tutor at the Pierre and Marie Curie University who teaches robotics and is babysitting the Paris ICub, makes a demonstration with ICub robot, a ?hybrid embodied cognitive system for a humanoid robot" about 1 metre (3.2 feet) high, at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris September 4, 2009. Six versions of ICub exist in laboratories across Europe, where scientists are painstakingly tweaking its electronic brain to make it capable of learning, just like a human child and hoping it will learn how to adapt its behaviour to changing circumstances, offering new insights into the development of human consciousness. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer

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    Google to shut down virtual world website

    Fri Nov 21, 2008 1:38pm EST
    A Google search page is seen through the spectacles of a computer user in Leicester, central England July 20, 2007. REUTERS/Darren Staples

    (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.

    Technology

    The company said in its blog it supports experimentation but added: "We've also always accepted that when you take these kinds of risks not every bet is going to pay off."

    Lively, which features real-time virtual world characters known as avatars and three-dimensional graphics to congregate in virtual rooms, was launched in July to match Linden Lab's popular Second Life.

    "Between now and the end of the year we encourage you to capture all your hard work by taking videos and screenshots of your rooms," the blog said.

    (Reporting by Ajay Kamalakaran in Bangalore; Editing by David Holmes)
    Technology


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