Karyn Ritter's husband has a company called Doppleganger. Their first product is a virtual nightclub where you can go to hang out, talk with other people online, dance, flirt, and everything else a high-end nightclub has. Karyn showed me an early demo of the lounge, and I have to say it was pretty impressive -- and fun.

Karyn tells me a reporter writing about the site couldn't get anyone in the club to talk to him, not even the robot bartenders. "So, the software is very realistic," I said. "Yup," replied Karyn.

Head on over to http://www.pcdmusiclounge.com/ and check out the action yourself. Tell the Pussycat Dolls Harpster sent cha'.

JavaOne is this week in San Francisco. One new, and very cool, thing this year is the Freedom Toaster. Sun, along with the Shuttleworth Foundation, is loading up Sun servers with a bunch of freeware. These servers are part of kiosks in Khayelitsha and other townships in South Africa that allow citizens there to easily get copies of the freeware. It's difficult to get internet access in South Africa, so many folks there don't have ready access to freeware. These kiosks allow them to get the software they want and need, free and easy.

Check out http://www.freedomtoaster.org/ for more information on the Freedom Toaster project, and if you're at JavaOne this week, register for Simon Phipps's talk about the Freedom Toaster at http://freedomtoaster.gobof.org/. The talk is on Wednesday at 7:00 pm, Moscone Convention Center, Room 123.

Technorati Tags: OpenSolaris, Solaris