Is the real economy dragging you down? Hop into Second Life, where the virtual world's gross domestic product jumped 54% in the fourth quarter!

Residents of Second Life traded $100.8 million worth of virtual items in the three months ended Dec. 31, up from $65.4 million in the same period a year earlier, said Tom Hale, chief product officer of Linden Lab, the San Francisco company that runs the virtual world. Though the sales occur in virtual Linden Dollars, the currency itself is bought and sold for U.S. dollars (the exchange rate is currently 262 Linden Dollars per U.S. dollar).

To get a piece of that action, Linden Lab announced tonight that it had acquired two websites that broker these sales: XStreet SL and OnRez. Terms of the deals were not disclosed.

For a 5% sales commission, the sites serve up an Amazon.com-like one-stop shopping experience for Second Life goods. What kind of goods? How about your very own President Obama avatar (pictured above) for about $7.50? Or a bouquet of virtual roses for a mere $2? Can't qualify for a mortgage? Get a Second Life mansion with a waterfront view for just $114.

Last year, Linden Lab estimated that its users traded about $360 million worth of items, with XStreet SL and OnRez brokering about 1% of that, or roughly $36 million in trades. Let's see, 5% of that is $1.8 million -- enough to shower your Second Life mansion with as many roses as your virtual Obama could possibly want.

-- Alex Pham

Photo credit: MrS via XStreet SL

It's been more than a year since a slew of marketers pulled out of Second Life and pundits worried that the 3D virtual world had jumped the shark. So why is a Kentucky company opening dozens of virtual malls that allow marketers to advertise their wares in a place that looks a heck of a lot like Second Life? And why do the avatars in this virtual world look a bit like neckless zombies? Perhaps because marketers never learn. Find out more on the LA Times Shopping blog.

Photo: She's aliiiiive! An avatar in a VirtualEShopping.com mall. Credit: VirtualEShopping.com

Anthony E. Zuiker, the creator and executive producer of hit television franchise "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," was introduced as the leader of a religious movement.

Speaking at the NewTeeVee Live conference in San Francisco, Zuiker said he believed Silicon Valley and Hollywood could combine forces to transform television and bring its storytelling power to all devices, including mobile phones and video game consoles.

"There is a ton of business to be done with Silicon Valley," said Zuiker, a forensics junkie who developed his ideas for "CSI" while driving a tram at the Mirage resort in Las Vegas.

He has experimented with new media, including casting the pinup models from the Suicide Girls website on an episode of "CSI," running an online contest and having actor Gary Sinise make an appearance in the virtual world Second Life.

The experiments haven't all panned out. But Zuiker is committed to finding ways to extend the "CSI" brand beyond television, he said.

Capturing the attention of your audience wherever they are and creating an immersive experience that keeps them coming back may not be a matter of survival at this point. But it will be. Despite every network boasting hit shows, Zuiker said, viewership and media companies' stock prices are depressed.

"CBS has empowered me to take chances," Zuiker said.

So he's spending a lot of time in Silicon Valley. Today he had lunch with serial entrepreneur Marc Andreessen.

Zuiker may not be able to fully achieve his all-media-all-the-time goals with "CSI." He says the key will be to create, from scratch, a television program with all devices in mind.

-- Jessica Guynn

Photo: "CSI" creator Anthony E. Zuiker. Credit: Frederick M. Brown / Getty Images

As if Google didn't have a strong enough hold on the planet already, today it's launching its own world -- a virtual world, to be exact. Lively, which Google likes to call a "virtual experience," allows you to create an avatar, decorate your own virtual room, invite friends to your room and do things you've always dreamed of, like blow up oil barrels on a deserted island.

Unlike popular virtual worlds such as Second Life, Lively doesn't require you to download new software. All you need is a browser plug-in. The service is also more distributed than Second Life: Its rooms will live on Web pages on Facebook and other sites, so you might stumble across them when browsing the Internet. Rooms can be private spaces, with entry by invitation only, or open-topic rooms, where you can meet people interested in discussing topics you love, like Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Aniston or Google. It also ties into other Google services. You can stream YouTube videos into your virtual living room or post your Picasa pictures on your walls.

"Our intent is to be part of the users' everyday experience," said Niniane Wang, an engineering manager at Google who helped create Lively. "We designed it to be easy to use."

An early look into Lively suggests that Google succeeded at that mission. It's easy to choose avatars from a number of different options, including a turban-wearing bear. It's easy to change their clothes, hair color and skin color. It's easy to drag and drop furniture and lava lamps to position them around your room. Want your turban-wearing bear to wave to the hot mama across the room? Just type \wave. Want him to giggle? Just type \laugh.

Lively looks hip, too. It's kind of a combination between anime and a Disney movie, with wide-eyed avatars and colorful, angular scenery. Chat bubbles are brightly colored and attached to avatars with long stems.

All of which leads to the big question: Is Lively going to be the site that finally brings virtual worlds into the mainstream? Probably, said Chris Sherman, executive director of Virtual Worlds Management, an industry trade group. "With a player like Google jumping into this, you're going to see a lot more people understand this space and pay attention to it," he said.

Lively's popularity with the virtual world crowd, however, will ...

You can do lots of things on a mobile phone. Find directions. Play time-consuming games like Brickbreaker. Call your friends. Now, if you have one of 40 high-tech mobile phones, you troll around on an island, cavort with dolphins and maybe even go to a corporate meeting.

No, this isn't some new function of the iPhone. We’re talking about Second Life, the 3-D roleplaying game that was really popular, then wasn’t and then was again. A company called Vollee has launched a free beta version of Second Life on mobile phones, calling it the first time "residents can explore the entire virtual world from their handsets."

At first blush, it seemed hard to believe that Second Life could work on a mobile phone. The virtual world is often crowded and its servers so slow that an avatar will land at a destination and take 10 seconds for the castle or dance club she just entered to appear around her. A few YouTube videos show users trying to use the phone version. One video, created by Vollee, features dizzying techno music. Another was posted by a French user who kept saying things like "It's really awesome," and, “I really love it," so it was tough to take either as a reliable source.

It was time to decide for ourselves: is it possible to have a Second Life on a mobile phone too? The first order of business ...

Linden Lab, the company that created the virtual world "Second Life," now has its second CEO: Mark Kingdon former head of digital marketer Organic Inc. The announcement came more than a month after Linden Lab founder Philip Rosedale said he would step down to become chairman of the board so the company could find a new leader to expand Second Life.

Kingdon will be charged with making the three-dimensional virtual world easier to use for its half a million active users while recruiting more businesses and consumers. "He grasps the enormous potential of all things 3-D," said Mitch Kapor, a board member and the founding investor of Linden Lab, which generates revenue by selling virtual real estate in Second Life.

Buoyed by publicity and novelty, Second Life grew rapidly in 2006 and 2007 but has slowed dramatically this year.

"Given the tremendous amount of publicity and public interest, we have to get better at getting people in-world and making it a better experience for them," said Kingdon, who goes by the Second Life name of M Linden.

Kingdon, who has an MBA from the Wharton School of Business, has also worked at the consulting division of PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Not surprisingly, Second Life users were divided about the company's business decision. Some of the 150 comments posted on the blog announcing Kingdon's appointment were in line with those of Bobo Decosta, who wrote that Second Life "can't be fixed! It's ruined!" A more supportive character calling himself Jazzman wrote: "Good luck. It'll be just a little like herding cats."

Kingdon said he conducted some of his job interviews virtually, in Second Life.

-- Alana Semuels

Semuels, a Times staff writer, covers marketing and the LA tech scene.