java.net Spotlights

Ricoh Java Programming Contest 2006
The ricoh.dev.java.net project is the home of the Ricoh Java Programming Contest 2006. Students from universities in six European countries are encouraged to develop innovative Java-based applications for Richo's Aficio multi-functional products. Information on entering the contest is compiled on the ricoh project's front page, and requires being a java.net member, joining the CoolThreads project and the support forum, and then submit a project request. Registration is open through February 15, 2006.
[12/12/2005]

SwingLabs
The SwingLabs project describes itself as "a Sun Microsystems supported project that allows experimentation with extensions to existing Swing components, new Swing components, and other desktop related technologies such as Java2D, AWT, etc. It acts as a testbed for ideas related to client side techologies. Successful experiments will be considered for inclusion into future vesions of the JDK." As well as being the parent to the prominent JDesktop Integration Components (JDIC) and JDesktop Network Components (JDNC) projects, SwingLabs has a number of smaller, focused projects, like the latest version of the SwingWorker for thread-safe long-running Swing tasks.
[12/05/2005]

JDK Community Starter Bug List
Want to contribute to the JDK but don't quite know where to begin? The JDK Community Starter Bug List collects bugs identified by JDK engineers as well-suited for outside contributors to fix. These bugs were chosen for being useful, easy to fix, low impact, and not already on Sun's to-do list for Mustang. A getting started page suggests how you can claim a bug, collaborate with others, and contribute a fix.
[11/28/2005]

JavaOne 2006 Call for Papers
There's just a week and a half to go for the JavaOne 2006 Call for Papers, which closes on November 30. The CFP page offers guidance in what attendees want -- specifically "talks that deepen their practical knowledge" -- speaker selection criteria, and policies that proposals need to adhere to. Potential JavaOne attendees can voice their opinion on what kinds of sessions they'd like to see on the java.net Planning JavaOne 2006 Forum.
[11/21/2005]

OSWorkflow
The OpenSymphony project OSWorkflow offers an extremely flexible workflow system that can be plugged into existing applications, whether or not they're OpenSymphony-based. OSWorkflow differs from other workflow offerings by working at a lower, more flexible level. For example, OSWorkflow does not mandate a specific GUI tool (in fact, the recommended approach is to create workflows "by hand" in XML). The project's philosophy is that quick plug-and-play workflow frameworks are typically not sufficient to satisfy enterprise requirements, so OSWorkflow offers a more developer-oriented, "hands on" approach.
[11/14/2005]

Sun Grid Developer Community
The recently-launched Sun Grid Developer Community offers tools and resources for the development of standards, infrastructure, architecture and partnerships for the Sun Grid pay-as-you-go service. Many resources are available on the community wiki, and the community's project space offer a place to collaborate on projects that run on or are interfaces to Sun Grid, or help with development of grid applications. You can also join the Pilot Project and get 100 free hours of CPU time on the grid.
[11/07/2005]

Planning JavaOne 2006 Forum
The Planning JavaOne 2006 Forum offers an opportunity for java.net members to suggest the content and direction of the JavaOne 2006 conference. There are separate discussions for each of the major tracks (which may be used as the categories in the Call For Papers): Web Tier, Tools, Core Enterprise, Desktop, Core Platform, Mobile and Embedded Devices, and Cool Stuff. A Grab Bag discussion offers an opportunity to post other ideas for JavaOne that don't fit into one particular track.
[10/31/2005]

Jini Technology Starter Kit 2.1
Announced at the Ninth Jini Community Meeting, the Jini Technology Starter Kit 2.1 is the first to be released under the terms of an Apache license. The kit, available from the downloads page offers an implementation of JavaSpace05, along with ease-of-development and ease-of-deployment improvements, plus support for multiple IP addresses and URL-based deployments.
[10/24/2005]

Publicizing Your Project
The Publicize Your Project page has been updated with more complete information about communicating with the java.net community. This page, always available under the "Get Involved" heading in the left nav, shows you how you can submit information for the various sections of the front page -- projects & communities, feature articles, spotlights, news, etc. -- and how to use other tools to get the word out, such as participating in forums or using your project's web space to host tutorials, newsletters, or whatever else you need.
[10/17/2005]

NetBeans Mobility Pack on SDN "Ask The Experts"
Got questions about the NetBeans Mobility Pack? This week, the Sun Developer Network's Ask The Experts event is featuring Product Line Manager Matt Volpi and Technical Lead Petr Suchomel answering your questions about this J2ME coding / testing / debugging tool, including questions on the the recently-released NetBeans Mobility Pack 5.0 Beta. This event runs from Monday to Friday, October 10-14.
[10/10/2005]

Flying Saucer
The xhtmlrenderer project, better known as "Flying Saucer", offers an XHTML renderer with extensive CSS support, completely written in Java. The most recent release offers better support for float and clear, absolute positioning, absolute units like inches and centimeters, percentage width and height values, image browsing, directory listing, and more. A Java Web Start browser demo is available, showing off many of these new features.
[10/03/2005]

DWR (Direct Web Remoting)
AJAX is quickly gaining steam as a client-side technology for web applications, but who wants to write all that JavaScript and test it across browsers? "DWR (Direct Web Remoting) is easy Ajax for Java. It makes it simple to call Java code directly from Javascript. It gets rid of almost all the boiler plate code between the web browser and your Java code." Featured in the recent article Developing AJAX Applications the Easy Way, it frees you from JSF and Struts drudgeries, leaving "just you, DWR, Java, HTML and Javascript."
[09/19/2005]

JavaServer Faces
The javaserverfaces project hosts Sun's implementation of the Java Server Faces standard (JSR 127). This technology allows for speedy development of web applications by combining reusable UI elements in a web page and connecting these to data sources and event handlers. The project offers not only nighly and weekly builds and the latest source, but also sample code that is highlighted in two recent Sun Developer Network articles: Creating and Using a Custom Render Kit and Unified Expression Language.
[09/12/2005]

AtLeap
The AtLeap project describes itself as "a multilingual free Java CMS (Content Management System) with full-text search engine. Blandware AtLeap is a framework which allows you to rapidly start your own Web application." The servlet-based system handles multi-lingual content and offers many search and customization options. Project owner Andrey Grebnev also notes in his blog that AtLeap won second place in the J2EE division of a recent Sun-sponsored Java programming contest.
[09/05/2005]

Logger
The Logger project offers java.net project owners access to the Apache log files for their projects. The service works by adding specially-named users as observers to your project. For example, adding weekly_logger will cause a weekly log file to be sent to the project owner. You can also receive stats reports that provide a simple HTML overview of which files are being accessed, as seen in this example.
[08/29/2005]

Open Language Tools
"We believe that computers are tools that can help people - in our case, we want computers to help translators. Anything that can be done to help translators improve the quality of their work, or reduce the amount of time it takes to do translation is definitely within the scope of this project." This is the philosophy of the Open Language Tools project, which offers an XLIFF translation editor and a number of XLIFF file filters to handle working with documentation file formats (HTML, JSP, OpenOffice.org, etc.) and software formats (Java properties and ResourceBundles, among others).
[08/21/2005]

Cajo
The Cajo project offers "a small, free library, enabling powerful dynamic multi-machine cooperation, both within, and between, Java applications." The framework makes no syntactic distinction between local and remote objects, and thus requires no code changes to distribute processing across the network. Applications can transfer their user interface to any Java-capable client. The project claims "This architecture can fulfill the true promise of Java: Turn the network into one seamless, evolving computer; link everything, from mainframes, to mobile phones." Cajo is also featured in the links of the Wikipedia article on Computer cluster.
[08/15/2005]

JAXB RI Architecture Document Project
A sub-project of the JAXB RI project, the JAXB RI Architecture Document Project provides "a high-level map for developers who are interested in looking at / playing with the JAXB RI source code." This view is like " a map of the source code, which helps you understand the big picture and which part of the code you need to dive in to fix the problem at hand. This has been somewhat lacking in the JAXB RI for quite some time." Kohsuke Kawaguchi's weblog entry Pumping up javadoc discusses the custom taglets that allow the design documents and diagrams to stay up-to-date with the code.
[08/08/2005]

Quartz
The Quartz project, part of the OpenSymphony collection of Java Enterprise components, offers a full-featured job scheduling system that can be integrated into a wide variety of J2SE and J2EE applications, regardless of size. Quartz allows you to schedule tens of thousands of tasks, and its advanced features include clustering and participation in container-managed transactions. Quartz is used by thousands of developers, driving both commercial applications and open-source projects.
[08/01/2005]

Mobicents
The Mobiicents project offers the first open-source certified implementation of JAIN SLEE 1.0, which "brings to telecom application developers what J2EE brings to Web and Enterprise application developers." JAIN SLEE allows popular building blocks such as SIP to be plugged into a framework as resource adapters. It also enables the composition of Service Building Blocks (SBB's) for call control, billing, administration and more. Mobicents is also applicable to problem domains requiring high volume, low latency signalling, including financial trading and online gaming.
[07/25/2005]

JavaTools Projects Directory
The recently launched JavaTools Projects Directory. seeks to provide an easy way to discover the tools that belong to the Java Tools Community, providing the ability to search for tools by description keywords or related topics. Tools are also classified under various categories depending on status, topic, etc., and include a link through which you can check the RSS feeds of projects directly with your browser or other RSS client.
[07/18/2005]

Project Matisse
If you saw James Gosling's keynote and "toy show" at JavaOne (or if you read his blog about it), then you might be interested in trying out "Matisse", the new form designer for NetBeans. If so, check out Project Matisse - Java GUI easy & good looking "by default", which describes Matisse's goals and its integration into the latest NetBeans source. The article also describes what you'll need to use Matisse today: since it isn't yet in a production build, you'll have to check out and build the latest NetBeans source, then activate Matisse with a command-line switch.
[07/11/2005]

Robotics Community
The newest java.net community, the Robotics Community, made its debut at JavaOne, with robotics being the subject of two technical sessions at the conference. The community currently features two projects: Sumo robots, as seen at various conferences, and the incubated JRobotics project, which includes preliminary code for a robotics library and simulator, with more in the works.
[07/05/2005]

JXTA "Triple Play"
The JXTA Community has just completed what it calls a "triple play": simultaneous releases of three different implementations of the JXTA P2P protocols, all of them interoperable. The three releases are JXTA-J2SE 2.3.4, JXTA-J2ME 2.0, and JXTA-C/C++ 2.1.1. Community members are also invited to meet up face-to-face at Sunday night's pre-JavaOne JXTA Town Hall meeting.
[06/20/2005]

GlassFish
Developers who want greater access to the ongoing development of Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) are invited to check out the GlassFish project, which describes itself as "a window and entry point into Sun's development process." Community members will be able to view source code, offer improvements, and join in technical discussions. The first available module is Webtier, the next generation application server which uses grizzly, an HTTP listener implemented in Java NIO. Access to more modules is in the works.
[06/13/2005]

JavaOne Community Corner Slide Show
As part of the java.net Community Corner at JavaOne, there will be a slide show on the plasma screens in that part of the pavilion. Members are invited to submit pictures of groups of developers, screenshots of projects, pictures of community leaders, and anything else that would help show the breadth of the java.net community. To submit, log into your java.net account, go to the Documentss & Files section of the the 2005 JavaOne slide show folder and click "suggest a file."
[06/06/2005]

xlSQL Excel JDBC Driver
Many people use spreadsheets the way they'd use a database, and the xlSQL Excel JDBC Driver embraces this approach by offering a JDBC driver that allows Excel documents to be read and written with SQL as if they were tables in a database. Utilities included with the latest release allow you to export filesystem data to Excel, and to export Excel to XML or SQL script format. xlSQL also comes with a zero-admin MySQL Server which runs out of the zip.
[05/30/2005]

java.net Partner Network
The professional organizations that participate in java.net are represented in the java.net Partner Network, which exists to recognize their contributions and offer further opportunities for collaboration. Organizations that are already involved in projects on java.net development are invited to check out the available levels of partnership opportunities.
[05/23/2005]

Java.net Community Corner at JavaOne
Exchange ideas with other java.net members at our Community Corner at this year's JavaOne. The Community Corner is where project members can meet their community leaders, and where projects can show off what they're doing in 20-minute "mini-talks". Daniel Brookshier has more information in his weblog entry JavaOne Community Corner. If you're interested in presenting a mini-talk, reserve a time on the wiki page.
[05/16/2005]

Project Looking Glass: Demo Apps
With Project Looking Glass offering a 3D enhanced desktop experience, developers can contribute demo apps to show off what's possible in the "LG3D" environment. The LG 3D Demo Apps project compiles completed demos, while a number of ongoing efforts are in the LG3D Incubator. Looking Glass applications under development include games, media players, mail readers and more.
[05/09/2005]

JRPG Maker
"Simple and Fun" describes the approach of JRPG Maker, a role-playing game toolkit meant "to test concepts related to MMORPG and Java 2D graphics performance." The project offers a demo game that can be launched with Java Web Start, and is working on RPG-builder tools such as adventure and conversation scripting and map creation. The project is also working to incorporate networking so that many players can adventure together.
[05/02/2005]

NetBEAMS
The Networked Bay Environmental Assessment and Monitoring Stations or NetBEAMS is part of the Java Distributed Data Acquisition and Control (JDDAC) Community. JDDAC software is being used to build out wired and wireless sensors in the San Francisco Bay to test water quality and environmental data. The NetBEAMS system will enhance the reach of current systems by allowing them to be deployed remotely and offshore.
[04/25/2005]

Genesis
Big things get started with Genesis, a project which bills itself as "a framework that aims to simplify development of client/server and desktop applications by integrating several other open-source products and extending them in innovative ways." The project combines Hibernate, AspectWerkz, Apache Commons, and other libraries to create a system that is simple, scalable, and readily testable. The project's home page says that one Genesis-based customer solution is processing over one million transactions per day.
[04/18/2005]

CodeZoo
The recently-launched CodeZoo is like a "CPAN for Java". As Mark Hedlund writes in CodeZoo, a new O'Reilly site, launches, "CodeZoo exists to help you find high-quality, freely available, reusable components, getting you past the repetitive parts of coding, and onto the rest and the best of your projects." Java.net projects can benefit from these pre-packaged, ready-to-use (and, more importantly, ready-to-combine) open-source code, first in Java and later in other languages.
[04/11/2005]

Online Communities Resources
Helen Chen, java.net Site Manager, has started a JavaPedia page About Online Communities. She has seeded the page with an impressive list of Papers and Articles, Books, Journals, and Lists, and Organizations, websites, and related online communities. She notes that the list is preliminary and invites you to add your favorite resources. Below the line at the bottom of the page feel free to discuss any related issues.
[04/04/2005]

AppFuse
There are many great open-source projects to provide the pieces of a Java web application... but who has time to learn them all? AppFuse combines best-of-breed pieces to get you up and running with Tomcat, MySQL, Spring, Struts, and more, with a single install command. You can learn more about AppFuse in the feature article AppFuse: Start Your J2EE Web Apps, written by the project's founder. The project is currently asking interested parties to download and use AppFuse and join the mailing list to suggest improvements. The next version is slated to improve usability with IDE's and reduce coupling with Tomcat to support other application servers.
[03/28/2005]

HAT - The Heap Analysis Tool
The Heap Analysis Tool (HAT) is one of the most popular downloads on java.net. HAT analyzes heap dump files from Java programs, and is commonly used as a tool to track down unintentional object retention (often referred to as "memory leaks"). It reads the heap dump and sets itself up as a web-server, so that a developer can run queries against the dump through a familiar web interface. HAT was originally written in 1998 and has been released as an "interesting, but unsupported, technology that may be of use as a debugging aid for Java developers."
[03/21/2005]

Trails
Domain Driven Development focuses on building the domain first, then allowing a framework to provide a UI. The Trails project is an example of this, offering a DDD framework "in the spirit of Ruby on Rails or Naked Objects," with the goal of making Java enterprise development radically simpler. This Java Enterprise community project reuses established Java technologies such as Spring, Tapestry, and Hibernate, and doesn't involve generated code - as its introduction says, "you only write code when you want to override what Trails gives you."
[03/14/2005]

Richard Gabriel, java.net founder, receives ACM/AAAI Allen Newell Award
In the spotlight this week, the ACM has awarded "Richard Gabriel of Sun Microsystems - the ACM/AAAI Allen Newell Award for his role in shaping the growth and impact of object technology, and his influence in developing a software design community that cares about clear communication of ideas. A published poet and musician, Gabriel conceived of java.net as a self-creating and self-governed web place where communities join to build a city of diverse interests engaged in using the Java language and technology in routine and innovative ways. The Newell Award recognizes career contributions that have breadth within computer science, or that bridge computer science and other disciplines."
[03/07/2005]

OpenSymphony
The latest java.net Success Story offers a look at the OpenSymphony projects. Many of these projects are so successful on their own - notably WebWork, Quartz, SiteMesh, and OSCache - that some people don't realize they have a common parent. In fact, they do share a common set of principles: business-friendliness, J2EE focus, and real-world applicability. Based on an interview with project leads Patrick Lightbody and Hani Suleiman, the article looks at OpenSymphony's history, the wide adoption of its projects, and how it fits in with the java.net community.
[02/28/2005]

JAI and Image I/O
We welcome the Java Advanced Imaging (JAI) and the JAI Image I/O projects. JAI allows Java applications to incorporate high-performance, high-end image processing functionality, while the Image I/O code enables reading and writing of popular formats. With the source now available, JAI's project leaders intend to develop JAI 1.3 under the JCP, with community members contributing to the expert group that will design and implement this new version.
[02/21/2005]

Embedded Java Community
The new Embedded Java Community on java.net has made its premiere, and is inviting developers of all types to get involved with the community's activities. The community contacts acknowledge that since the community is so new, "most of our projects with be starting out in the Incubator," and while they work on their policies for incubator project graduation, they suggest developers check out the EmbeddedJava Incubator to see what's cooking.
[02/14/2005]

Your Java talk at OSCon
There are many open source Java projects. Submit a proposal for a talk or a tutorial about your favorite for this year's O'Reilly Open Source Convention. OSCon is held in Portland, OR August 1-5 but the call for papers closes February 13.
[02/07/2005]

new2java
The new2java project helps new and experienced developers get up and running on the Java platform by directing them to useful training resources. The project collects links to code samples, tutorials and quizzes, and provides a place to chat with other developers about problems, solutions, coding techniques and more.
[01/28/2005]

JavaOne 2005 T-Shirt Hurling Contest
Once you've finished your session proposals for the JavaOne conference, it's time to move on to the next most important to-do: your entry for the annual T-shirt hurling contest. This tradition of building elaborate machines to toss T-shirts into the main-hall crowd, organized and hosted by Java creator James Gosling, now has its own java.net project. The page currently hosts contest rules and an entry form, along with a look back at Dr. Gosling's 2003 trebuchet entry, and promises more updates in the near future.
[01/21/2005]

Sun Certified Programmer Exam Beta
Be the first on your block to take the beta version of the revised Sun Certified Programmer for the Java 2 Platform Standard Edition 5.0 exam. The beta costs $49 and allows between four and five hours to complete 166 questions. The beta exam will be offered between January 13 and February 13, 2005. Here is a pdf describing how to register for the exam and here is a pdf describing the goals tested on the exam.
[01/14/2005]

OSCache
Dynamic content is much easier to serve and accelerate thanks to OSCache, one of the Open Symphony projects on java.net. OSCache caches portions of JSP's, binary content like images and PDF's, and even any Java object. It can also return cached items in case of a server-side error (instead of blowing out of the whole page), and supports clustering, persistent caching, and programmatic control of caching.
[01/07/2005]

Safari plug-ins for NetBeans, Eclipse
Safari, the premiere collection of technical electronic books for developers, has offered its services to java.net members through two projects: Safari search plug-ins for NetBeans and for Eclipse. These plug-ins put a wealth of Java information at your fingertips, without leaving your IDE of choice. If you're not ready to subscribe to Safari yet, you can try it for 14 days free, using either the 10 books of your choice or a pre-populated bookshelf that's already set up for you.
[01/03/2005]

JCK Project
JCK, the J2SE Technology Compatibility Kit used by Sun and licensee partners to ensure compatibility in different Java implementations, is now available as a read-only source release in the JCK project. While licensees have always had access to the JCK, this is the first time the developer community at large has been able to see the compatibility test suite, and better understand how compatibility is assessed between different virtual machine implementations.
[12/17/2004]

Chinook
Peers in the field of bioinformatics can share their efforts more effectively, thanks to the Chinook project. Chinook is a peer-to-peer bioinformatics system, turning command-line analysis applications into services that can be accessed over the internet. Over 25 such services have been made "Chinook-ready" and more can be added easily with XML. Chinook was awarded the 2004 BCNet "Best Overall Application Award" in the "Coolest Application" competition at the 4th Annual BCNet 2004 Conference.
[12/10/2004]

Portlet Community
The Portlet Community has recently made its debut on java.net. The community is dedicated to sharing information and code for building web portals, which are loosely defined as offering some combination of content aggregation, personalization, search, and single sign-on. The community is particularly interested in JSR-168, which aims to standardize portal components, or "portlets".
[12/03/2004]

Early access to Mustang binaries and source
The "Mustang" Snapshot Releases give developers access to the latest features and fixes made to the J2SE 6.0 release. Whether you choose to download the binaries or the source code, be aware that these early releases are only lightly tested before being made available so if you are risk averse or inexperienced, these snapshot releases should be avoided. Read Mustang Shapshots: Another experiment in openness by Mark Reinhold. Update: Build 13 was added on November 18, 2004.
[11/22/2004]

WebWork
WebWork, housed both on java.net and opensymphony.com, simplifies web application development by providing reusable UI components, pluggable configuration, an Inversion of Control (IoC) container, data mapping from HTTP to Java objects, a validation framework, and more. Though not as well-known as some app servers, it is popular enough to be covered by several books, including Java Open Source Programming and Art of Java Web Development.
[11/12/2004]

JCP Elections
The 2004 JCP Committee Election is now underway and is open through November 15 at Midnight PST. Members can vote for the open seats on the J2SE/J2EE and J2ME Executive Committees. Election results are to be available on November 16, with winners beginning their terms on November 30. More information about the election process is explained in the FAQ section
[11/05/2004]

Attune
Dealing with hundreds or thousands of audio files is hard enough, especially if you like some and don't like others. The Attune player from the Java Desktop community offers a solution: pay attention to what the user plays and what he or she skips over, then play more of the music the user seems to like. The simple player is already good enough to be used for daily listening, and the project is soliciting help from developers with Swing, JMF, and I/O skills.
[10/29/2004]

Leafy and LeafySeadragon
The Leafy project is designed to enable socket-based distributed systems that incorporate non-J2SE participants, such as J2ME devices and non-Java nodes. It is being used as the basis of LeafySeadragon, an application that uses underwater hydrophones to research two-way communication between humans and cetaceans (dolphins, porpoises, whales). A java.sun.com article on LeafySeadragon has more details on how it works.
[10/22/2004]

Success Story: JOGL
java.net's ongoing success stories series is spotlighting JOGL, the project to allow Java programs to use the OpenGL 2D and 3D graphics API. In this article, JOGL co-creator Ken Russell speaks with editor Chris Adamson about JOGL's history, its accomplishments, and its future.
[10/15/2004]

Voice over IP projects
The Java Communications community hosts several voice over IP projects, most based on the Java API's for Integrated Networks (JAIN), which was featured in a recent Java Developer Journal article. The jain-sip project features an implementation of the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP, also RFC 3261), which enables projects like the sip-communicator audio/video softphone.
[10/08/2004]

Project Support Improvements
Several new features are available to help promote your java.net projects. Project owners can now indicate that the project contains a downloadable executable by clicking on 'Change your project directory settings' from their "My Pages" tab. This will cause a special "downloadable" icon to appear alongside the project name in the project directory. Also, project announcements are now available via RSS - details for setting up a feed for your project are available on the Getting Started page.
[10/01/2004]

Flying Saucer
The JavaDesktop community project Flying Saucer is a 100% Java XHTML renderer, designed for embedding XHTML content into desktop applications. The recent beta release 3 (a browser demo is available via Java Web Start) offers 10x speed improvements and greater fidelity with the CSS 2.1 standard.
[09/24/2004]

SiteMesh
Separating web application appearance from functionality is made easier with SiteMesh. It allows you to assemble web pages from smaller, dynamic parts, and add a consistent appearance at the end of the process. The result is pages that look nicer and are easier to maintain, and special-purpose pages like printer-friendly pages are a snap. A feature article by Will Iverson can help you get started with SiteMesh.
[09/17/2004]

JDesktop Network Components
Reducing the learning, design, and coding requirements of desktop applications is the goal of the JDesktop Network Components. Announced at JavaOne '03, the JDNC project provides extensions to Swing, a JNDC API to make using these extended components easier, and an XML markup language to allow building some or all of the GUI without writing Swing code. JNDC GUI's can then be deployed as standalone applications, Java WebStart applications, or Java Applets.
[09/10/2004]

OpenSymphony Cache
JSP performance is a critical issue for major web sites, and the java.net project OpenSymphony Cache can help. The fast and flexible system can cache JSP's or other servlet-generated content, works in clusters, and supports a variety of disk- and memory-based caching strategies. It's used by popular, high-traffic web sites, including TheServerSide, JavaLobby, and JRoller.
[09/03/2004]

NetBeans IDE 4.0 Beta 1
The NetBeans Community has released the 4.0 Beta 1 version of the Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Download the beta for Windows, Linux, the Solaris(tm) Operating System or Mac OS X.
[08/27/2004]

Javacc
Parser creation is simplified with JavaCC, which its FAQ, reports "has been used to create parsers for RTF, Visual Basic, Python, Rational Rose mdl files, XML, XML DTDs, HTML, C, C++, Java, JavaScript, Oberon, SQL, VHDL, VRML, ASN1, email headers, and lots of proprietary languages." JavaCC is part of the Java Tools Community.
[08/20/2004]

JavaTools new homepage
The java.net Java Tools community has unveiled its new homepage. Subscribe to their new newsletter. Features include tool of the week, great idea of the week, and tips.
[08/13/2004]

Project Looking Glass
Open-sourced at JavaOne 2004, Project Looking Glass uses 3D visualization and windowing to redefine the desktop experience. The authors say: "we're releasing the Project Looking Glass code to the whole community to explore every aspect of the technology rather than restricting access to a privileged few."
[08/06/2004]

Safari Eclipse plug-in
The Safari search plug-in currently works with Eclipse version 2.1.3 and will soon be available in version 3.0. Now, without leaving the IDE, the developer can type in the keywords in the Safari search window and execute a search on the Safari library.
[07/30/2004]

The Mac Java Community at java.net
The Mac Java community focuses on Java development on and for Macintosh operating systems. Community projects include MRJ Adapter, which makes it easier for developers to use Mac-specific features in different versions of Java on the Mac, and JNI Direct, which simplifies the use of native Mac code.
[07/23/2004]

java3d
Sun has open-sourced the Java 3D API on java.net's Java Desktop Community. java3d is a parent project, containing the subprojects j3d-core, vecmath, j3d-core-utils and j3d-examples. A contributing to Java 3D page explains how to get involved with Java 3D development.
[07/16/2004]

RIFE v0.7.2 Released
The RIFE project offers a simplified approach to web application development. Its loosly coupled, robust system allows developers to use only the pieces they need, and to bring in whatever outside components a developer may want. Along with supporting several public websites, RIFE powers the Drone sub-project, an auto-responding IRC 'bot. RIFE allows Drone to offer simple deployment and web-based administration. Both are part of the Java Tools community.
[07/09/2004]

Java Specification Requests - a new java.net community
The new JSR community is a "gathering place of those who are involved in JSR projects as well as those interested in work defined by the JCP process. This community is designed to be a place for JSR discussion and collaboration. The development of the outputs of a JSR — the Specification, the Reference Implementation (RI) and the TCK — will take place here on java.net." The JSP spec work and JSTL spec work are already featured in projects
[07/06/2004]

Java Distributed Data Acquisition and Control (JDDAC) Framework
The Java Distributed Data Acquisition and Control (JDDAC) Community has released the first version of the JDDAC framework. The project provides common components for building intelligent systems in industrial, test, measurement and control environments. The first release includes a simple J2SE application to exercise the included Java Transducer Interface (JTI) and Java Measurement Dataflow Interface (JMDI) implementations. The purpose of this release is to offer an early preview of two of the JDDAC APIs, as well as providing a simple "Hello World" type data acqusition application that developers can build upon.
[06/18/2004]

JavaPedia workshop at JavaOne
The JavaPedia has just turned one year old. We are rerunning Ron Goldman's original article on the goals of the JavaPedia. Take a look and then sign up if you can join us for the JavaPedia workshop at JavaOne.
[06/14/2004]

JDIC JDesktop Integration Components
More complete integration with the host platform is the goal of the JDesktop Integration Components (jdic) project. JDIC provides access to the system's browser and mail applications, and can register Java applications as document viewers for specific file types. This Java Desktop Community project is also incubating sub-projects such as the SaverBeans Screensaver SDK. SaverBeans is running a contest and will show off winning screensavers at JavaOne and are offering T-shirts to early adopters.
[06/04/2004]

Ginipad
Ginipad, is a small IDE hosted in the Java Education and Learning Community community. It offers syntax highlighting, code completion and other features, while only needing 3 MB to run and five minutes to learn.
[06/04/2004]

Open For Business
The Open For Business project user conference ran in Minneapolis, MN on May 27-28, with developments posted to the OFBiz home page. The project is an open-source business automation effort, including tools for e-commerce, CRM, ERP, credit-card processing, etc. You can Download OfBiz 3.0. The project enjoys significant international developer support and is the focus of our first java.net success story.
[05/28/2004]

JOAL - Java APIs for OpenAL/Sound 3D
Games with great 3D graphics are possible with JOGL, but what good is great graphics without killer sound? JOAL is the audio equivalent, offering Java bindings to the OpenAL API for hardware-supported 3D spatialized sound. The project also offers a higher-level API, Sound3D, to allow developers to write to an easier-to-use, object-oriented interface.
[05/21/2004]

People wiki
Add or update your entry on the People Wiki. It is a place to let everyone know a little bit more about you - your real name, a bio, projects you're involved with and things that interest you.
[05/21/2004]

Velotags and JNuke projects collaborate
The "Velotags project and JNuke project have joined to create a Java implementation of phpnuke: Jnuke. The JNuke developers are changing its MVC framework from Struts to Spring, and with help of Velotags project members are restructuring it and building a flexible and prety WebUI." The java.net projects are collaborating to give the java community an flexible, powerfull and ready to use portal system.
[05/14/2004]

JavaOne Bulletin Board
JavaOne is a hectic week. The JavaOne Bulletin Board is a place for you to post information about sessions you are giving or may be interested in attending. Also feel free to create related wiki pages for meetups and other gatherings for your communities or projects.
[05/07/2004]

Juicy News Network
James Gosling's Juicy News Network project has been promoted from the JavaDesktop Incubator to a full-fledged project. JNN is an RSS news feed reader/aggregator. You can try it using Java WebStart (you may have to manually clear out the WebStart cache.) You can also download a jar of JNN or a Mac application. To try the talking version, click Talking JNN.
[04/30/2004]

Two JUGs graduate from the incubator
Two Java User Groups (JUGs) have graduated from the JUGs incubator. Congratulations to the Hong Kong JUG (check out their Duke-Panda logo), and Portal Java, a virtual community in Brazil. Visit the jugs-incubator project to see the easy steps you need to graduate to the JUGs community.
[04/23/2004]

Mythical Man-Month bookclub discussion
The java.net Bookclub is now up and running. Join John D. Mitchell in this month long discussion of Fred Brooks' classic The Mythical Man-Month in the first of our java.net bookclub discussions.
[04/13/2004]

2004 Java Technology Game Development Contest
Do you have an idea for a cool video game using Java technology? Maybe you've already developed a game that you like. The Java Games community invites you to "enter it in the 2004 Java Technology Game Development Contest and compete for $50,000 in prizes!" Check out the games-contest project for details on how to enter between now and June 7, 2004.
[03/26/2004]

JSDT: Shared Data Toolkit for Java Technology
The JavaDesktop community has launched Sun's first open-source JavaDesktop project JSDT , the shared Data Toolkit for Java Technology for adding collaboration to Java applets and applications. "It can be used to create network-centric applications, such as shared whiteboards or chat environments. Other uses are remote presentations, shared simulations, and easy data distribution for enhanced group workflow. "
[03/10/2004]

New Community: JDDAC
The latest addition to the java.net family is the Java Distributed Data Acquisition and Control Community. The JDDAC community will be working with NIST, IEEE, and ANSI to create open source standards for "the industrial, and test, measurement and control environments." They also intend to provide "key common components and adaptors that encourage the use of Java in the industrial and distributed transducer world."
[02/17/2004]

The java.net Linux community
This week's project spotlight is the newly formed java.net Linux community. Check out Chris DiBona's welcome and request a project of your own for the community.
[01/22/2004]

Daily and weekly newsletters from java.net
All java.net members can subscribe to the javanet_Daily and javanet_Weekly email updates. You must be logged in to subscribe The Daily Update is sent weekdays with a summary of the items new to the front page and includes bullet points with the news items and upcoming events as well. The Weekly Update will be sent Fridays with a summary of the preceding week.
[01/15/2004]

JAXB - Java APIs for XML Binding
The JAXB project is beginning to provide weekly binary and source code releases. This Java Web Services and XML community project is featuring these weekly builds of JAXB once you click through a conditions page. You can also download a PDF of a JAXB presentation from June 2003 and contribute to their wiki.
[12/26/2003]

jsr206-public: SR 206 Java API for XML Processing (JAXP) 1.3
This week's spotlight comes from the Java Web Services and XML community. They are hosting the jsr206-public project which contains artifacts for the JAXP 1.3 JSR that is in public review through January 15, 2004. You can download the specification, JavaDocs, and open issues and are invited to send your comments to JSR-206-comments@JCP.org. You can also visit the JSR 206 home page or the JSR 206 public review page.
[12/19/2003]

JInput: Java Game Controller API
The JInput project, this week's spotlight, is "an implementation of an API for game controller discovery and polled input." The pure Java core "can handle arbitrary controllers and returns both human and machine understandable descriptions of the inputs available." Platform specific plugins are being developed for Win32, Linux, and Mac OS X.
[12/12/2003]

Rife: Java web application framework
The Rife project aims to provide "all required tools and APIs to implement and perform all common website related tasks in a fast, intuitive and consistent manner." A RIFE application is built around a repository that " keeps the different parts of the application together, such as configuration data, site users, data sources, etc. These parts are called participants." The File Sharing section contains recent versions of the user guide in PDF or HTML, binaries, source, examples, and javadocs.
[12/04/2003]

aTrack: a bug tracking application using AOP
The aTrack project has just been promoted from the incubator into the General Projects category. The aTrack project is "an open source bug tracking application that demonstrates use of Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) with AspectJ." It is also intended to be a show case for "design patterns for building an enterprise-class Java system with AOP using lightweight open source components and frameworks". A good entry point is the project Wiki.
[11/26/2003]

jme: Java gaming engine
The Java Games community provides this week's project spotlight: the jme project "which provides a high performance scenegraph based rendering and physics system." The implementation has been redesigned so this is a good time to become a member. The JMonkey Engine (yes that's what jme stands for) includes more news and screenshots.
[11/17/2003]

DB2JavaObj: Java code from a database model
Join the work in progress on DB2JavaObj. The initial goals were to create a code generator that "when pointed to a database, be able to produce the tedious boiler plate code that almost any project requires- object properties, setters and getters, the SQL statements for basic CRUD." Download the latest build or navigate the source code .
[11/11/2003]

Jacknet: JXTA appliance controller
Bill Joy's sixth web is the Device Web described as "The Web with different devices that let each other know their capabilities, and interact accordingly." This week's java.net project spotlight is JXTA community project for controlling devices remotely over the internet: Jacknet. Check out a diagram of the Global Light Blinker architecture, read about proof of concept projects like the remote cat/dog feeder, car command center, and the 6 Sigma Aircraft Engine Counter, and find out more about the related Embedlets technology.
[11/03/2003]

soundjack:live music between numerous peers
Imagine a distributed jam session where you connect to the internet from home and play with musicians who are somewhere else. The JXTA Soundjack project aims to make this a reality - provided that you have " internet2 and a very low latency audio core." You can browse the source , join a mailing list, or read through background and related material from the Stanford CCRMA's (Center for Computer Research in Music and Acousitics) Soundwire home page .
[10/28/2003]

Wurm Online: Massively Multiplayer OnLine Game in Java
The java.net Java Games community has submitted this week's project spotlight: Wurm Online . Chris Melissinos writes "Wurm Online will be a community-centric fantasy MMORPG fully developed in java. Gameplay will be free at first, but when you wish to develop your character beyond basic skills, you're going to have to pay a monthly fee." The technologies used include java.net projects jogl and joal as well as BeanShell and GAGETimer.
[10/20/2003]

JAIN-SIP: Call control in Telecommunications and the Internet
The JAIN-SIP project features a reference implementation and TCK for the Java APIs for Integrated Networks Session Initiation Protocol. This "Java API for call control in the Telecommunications and Internet industry" is also described in JSR 32. The jain-sip-3pcc project which is " an example application that illustrates the use of JAIN-SIP."
[10/13/2003]