'T here is no new thing under the sun," said the preacher (Ecclesiastes, 1:9). Well, the preacher had it half right. Sometimes people come up with a brand-new thing in response to an age-old reality. Consider the case of Hong Kong-based software developer Eberhard Schoeneburg. According to recent reports, Mr. Schoeneburg took the age-old reality that the world is full of lonely, socially inhibited men, paired it with the age-old truth that there is always money to be made out of people's pain and came up with the brand-new idea of Vivienne -- a virtual girlfriend who can be accessed, starting later this year, on a brand-new third-generation (or 3G) cell phone.

It's a potentially brilliant idea. Mr. Schoeneburg is betting that lonely men will pay many times over for this bizarre online companionship: first for monthly access to Vivienne, who is really just a blend of a computerized voice, streaming video images and text messages, and then for the virtual chocolates, flowers, meals, movies and other things that will helpfully be made available for real-life swains to buy "her."

And that's just the money he hopes will flow to his company, Artificial Life. The hopeful or curious souls who sign up to sample Vivienne's cybernetic charms will also have to buy the fancy 3G phone and pay airtime costs to cell-phone operators. Vivienne is no cheap date.