LAST week, Google introduced Lively, an online tool that allows people to embody a cartoonish online avatar and have text-based conversations with friends and other Internet users in virtual chat rooms. The three-dimensional chatting is supposed to be more interactive and fun. Users can create and design their own rooms, which can be posted to a blog or social network profile as easily as a YouTube video. The tool can be reached at www.lively.com but it officially remains in the beta, or experimental, phase.