Drawing on its history of building online communities, Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) today launched OpenEco.org, a new community to help organizations calculate, compare, and reduce green house gas (GHG) emissions. OpenEco.org is free and open to all organizations. The only cost of admission is sharing data, transparently or anonymously, with other community participants.

Every day, more and more people join online communities, such as MySpace, FaceBook, and Second Life, and use file sharing systems like BitTorrent. In these virtual spaces they can reinvent themselves, make new friends, and share information and resources with others. Understanding how people give and receive digital gifts online is key to understanding the successes and failures of these communities.

According to the first study of its kind, core members of an online community are more likely to use emoticons, acronyms or capitals to convey their feelings. The closer people are to the centre of the community, the more likely their text will imitate colloquial spoken language.