To create a live-capture avatar, a user first chooses an avatar or character. This might be a 3D cartoonish version of the user. Or it could be a picture of a bear or a celebrity or an image of a cartoon character, like Spider-Man or Bugs Bunny.

A standard webcam captures the user's movements, facial expressions and the orientation of his or her head, neck and torso. But instead of simply broadcasting video of the person, the system uses that information to animate the chosen avatar image in real time.

So as the person talks, for example, the avatar's mouth moves in concert with his mouth and the avatar appears to be saying what the person is saying. The avatar smiles when the user smiles, frowns when the user frowns and shrugs when the user shrugs.

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I believe this kind of live-capture avatar chat will prove very popular, because it will offer people a rich interactive experience online without exposing actual images of users or even identifying them.