java.net Spotlights

Project Wonderland
Featured prominently at JavaOne 2007, Project Wonderland is a 3D scene manager for creating collaborative virtual worlds. Within those worlds, users can communicate with high-fidelity, immersive audio and can share live applications such as web browsers, OpenOffice documents, and games. A number of Wonderland video demos and interviews are available in the project's News section.
[05/28/2030]

Metro
The GlassFish web services stack has a new name: Metro. Combining the JAX-WS RI and WSIT projects, Metro is "a high-performance, extensible, easy-to-use web service stack. It is a one-stop shop for all your web service needs, from the simplest hello world web service to reliable, secured, and transacted web service that involves .NET services." More information and perspective is available in introductory blogs by Kohsuke Kawaguchi, Arun Gupta, and Harold Carr.
[06/25/2007]

Java Mobility Podcast
Launched in late April, the Java Mobility Podcast has already put out eight professionally-produced episodes featuring interviews and discussions on a number of topics of interest to the mobile developer community, including important JSRs and device fragmentation, vendor initiatives like Vodafone Betavine, OpenLazlo for ME devices, and more. Subscribe to the podcast via its feed, or find the podcast in the iTunes Store.
[06/11/2007]

Blu-Dahlia
The Blu-Dahlia project is a California-based user's group for developers of Blu-Ray Java applications, and applications for other GEM TV platforms, such as OCAP and MHP and GEM-IPTV. Like the nightclub in Raymond Chandler's 1946 movie, the Blu-Dahlia Java SIG is a place to exchange ideas and best practices among professionals. Blu-Dahlia intends to be an open group for the sharing of best practices in application development, including tools, techniques, frameworks, and shared code.
[06/04/2007]

Shoal
The Shoal project, part of the GlassFish Community, is a java based clustering framework that provides infrastructure to build fault tolerance, reliability and availability. The framework can be plugged into any product needing clustering and related distributed systems capabilities without tightly binding to a specific communications infrastructure. For a quick introduction, you can go through the Shoal Overview Presentation (PDF). and for further details, read the Shoal Overview document for details on Shoal's functionalities.
[05/21/2007]

Project OpenJFX
Introduced in the JavaOne general session, Project OpenJFX is a project of the OpenJFX community for sharing early versions of the JavaFX Script language and for collaborating on its development. In the future, the JavaFX Script code will be open sourced. The governance, licensing, and community models will be worked out as the project evolves. JavaFX is a new family of Sun products based on Java technology and targeted at the high impact, rich content market. JavaFX Script is a highly productive scripting language that enables content developers to create rich media and content for deployment on Java environments.
[05/14/2007]

JavaOne 2007 Community Corner Podcasts

Once again, java.net's booth at JavaOne will be the place for several dozen 20-minute mini-talks, presented by members of the java.net community, about their projects, communities, and related activities. We'll be recording all the talks and sending them out as podcasts over the next few weeks. You can listen the podcasts by visiting the Community Corner podcast page, subscribing to the feed, or finding the podcast via the iTunes Store.
[05/07/2007]

Ask the Experts: WSIT and Project Tango
Got a question about Web Services Interoperability Technology (WSIT) and Project Tango, two efforts focused on delivering interoperability between Java EE and .Net? The next Ask the Experts session spotlights these topics, allowing you to post your questions and get answers from Sun experts Arun Gupta, Harold Carr, and Marek Potociar. This session runs from April 30 through May 4.
[04/30/2007]

CommunityOne
Combine NetBeans Day with a GlassFish Day, add some OpenJDK and Mobile & Embedded, and you've got CommunityOne, a free and open event sponsored by Sun, taking place in San Francisco on Monday, May 7, on the eve of JavaOne. Along with formal session tracks, the event features a co-located unconference, a startup camp, a lunchtime session of the Java Posse podcast, and an opening general session by Tim O'Reilly.
[04/23/2007]

Java Mobile Application Video Contest Closes April 27
The Java Mobile Application Video Contest deadline of April 27th is fast approaching. This contest seeks example of great Java ME applications or services. To enter, create a video of up to three minutes that references Java ME or the open-source phoneME technology used, and post it to YouTube. Prizes include a Ericsson K800 phone, Panasonic Blu-Ray DVD Player, an Amazon.com gift certificate, and PlayStation 3 consoles. Check the official rules for more information and specifics of submitting your video.
[04/16/2007]

Beans Binding (JSR 295) Project
The Beans Binding project gives you an advance look at the work going into the early draft of JSR 295, which uses a modified version of the GlassFish JSP/JSF Expression Language (EL) to keep properties of two beans in sync, which can in turn be used to simplify rich GUI development. This project provides the reference implementation of Beans Binding, with an additional emphasis on the ability to bind to Swing components, and easy integration with IDEs such as NetBeans. "The intended audience for this snapshot is members of the community interested in binding, who want to see where we're headed and to provide early feedback. So that's exactly what we're looking for at this point; constructive feedback and bug reports are welcome."
[04/09/2007]

java.net Community Corner at JavaOne 2007
The java.net Community Corner at JavaOne 2007 will be your place to meet up with fellow project members and community leaders, and attend 20-minute mini-talks from fellow java.net members. Sign-ups for the mini-talks are still available, so post an abstract and you can show off your project in the booth (and to the audience of java.net podcast listeners). Finally, we'll have a running slide-show of java.net-related pictures, such as photos of project members and teams, screenshots, meetups, etc. If you'd like to add a photo from your project to the slideshow, just follow the directions.
[03/26/2007]

ROME
The ROME project "is an open source (Apache license) set of Atom/RSS Java utilities that make it easy to work in Java with most syndication formats: RSS 0.90, RSS 0.91 Netscape, RSS 0.91 Userland, RSS 0.92, RSS 0.93, RSS 0.94, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, Atom 0.3, and Atom 1.0." ROME includes a set of parsers and generators for the various flavors of syndication feeds, as well as converters to convert from one format to another. Check out the Powered By ROME wiki page to get an idea of how many sites are using ROME for their feed needs.
[03/19/2007]

Java Mobile Application Video Contest
Know of a great mobile application or service that runs on Java ME? The Java Mobile Application Video Contest is your chance to tell the world about it, and maybe just pick up a sweet prize. To enter, create a video of up to three minutes that references Java ME or the open-source phoneME technology used, and post it to YouTube. Prizes include a Ericsson K800 phone, Panasonic Blu-Ray DVD Player, an Amazon.com gift certificate, and PlayStation 3 consoles. Check the official rules and post your video by April 27.
[03/05/2007]

Ask the Experts: JAX-WS 2.1
The latest SDN Ask the Experts session is on JAX-WS 2.1. JAX-WS 2.0, a follow-on to Java API for XML-based RPC 1.1(JAX-RPC), simplifies the task of developing web services using Java technology. JAX-WS 2.1 is a maintenance release that adds WS-Addressing capabilities to JAX-WS 2.0. Got a question about JAX-WS 2.1? Submit your questions from February 26 through March 2 on the Ask the Experts page and get answers from three JAX-WS experts at Sun: Vivek Pandey, Jitendra Kotamraju, and Kohsuke Kawaguchi.
[02/26/2007]

java.net at JavaOne 2007
java.net is getting ready for May's JavaOne 2007 conference. Check out our JavaOne wiki page, in which we'll be keeping track of technical session and BoF's presented by java.net members, along with other java.net activities during the week. And once again, we'll be in the Pavilion with the java.net Community Corner, which gives you an opportunity to present your project, JUG, community, or other java.net-related mini-talk, both before a live audience in the booth and via the java.net podcast feed.
[02/19/2007]

Ask the Experts: Java Plug-In Technology
The latest SDN Ask The Experts session looks at the Java Plug-In technology, which as you probably know is included as part of the JRE and which establishes a connection between popular browsers and the Java platform. From now through Friday, February 16, you can ask your questions about the Java Plug-In and have them answered by Java SE Deployment Team members Dennis Gu, Calvin Cheung, and Margarita Fisher.
[02/12/2007]

Swing Application Framework
The JSR-296 Swing Application Framework prototype implementation is a small set of Java classes that simplify building desktop applications. The prototype provides infrastructure that's common to most desktop applications: application lifecyle, support for managing and loading resources, support for defining/managing/binding Actions, and persistent session state. The JSR-296 expert group launched this effort in late summer 2006. A prototype implementation, spec, and some small examples are now available. Although the JSR has not reached the "Early Draft" JCP review stage, the expert group has agreed to make the prototype public to give interested members of the Swing community the opportunity to provide feedback. This version is just a snapshot of the ongoing design process, it's likely to change substantially in the coming months.
[02/05/2007]

JavaOne 2007 Registration
The registration page for the JavaOne 2007 conference is now available. Early Bird discounts apply to conference passes purchased before April 4. This year's conference, which runs May 8-11 in San Fancisco, features a "new, expanded program that embraces technologies outside the core Java Platform, while keeping Java technology as the focal point of the Conference."
[01/22/2007]

Ask The Experts: Open-Source Java
The latest SDN Ask the Experts session addresses the topic of Open-Source Java. From Tuesday, January 16 to Friday, January 19, you can submit your questions on the open-sourcing of Sun's Java implementations, and have those questions answered by Richard Sands, Kenneth Drachnik, and Vivek Mody, the Community Marketing Managers for the SE, EE, and ME platforms respectively. You may also want to visit the Free and Open-Source Java FAQ in advance, or ask the experts a follow-up question about a topic from the FAQ.
[01/15/2007]

SIP Communicator
The SIP Communicator project is an audio/video Internet phone and instant messenger, which recently put out a 1.0 alpha 1 release after more than a year of development. SIP Communicator supports some of the most popular instant messaging and telephony protocols such as SIP, Jabber, AIM/ICQ, MSN and soon others like Yahoo and IRC. More information on using the project is available in a FAQ list.
[01/08/2007]

Project Looking Glass
The 3D desktop Project Looking Glass is approaching its 1.0 release, with the recent announcement of LG3D 1.0 RC1, with a final release expected soon. But what is a "3D" desktop? According to its home page, "Project Looking Glass is based on Java technology and explores bringing a richer user experience to the desktop and applications via 3D windowing and visualization capabilities. It is an open source development project based on and evolved from Sun Microsystems' Advanced Development division. It supports running unmodified existing applications in a 3D space, as well as APIs for 3D window manager and application development."
[12/18/2006]

Semblance
The Semblance project provides reusable components for Java applications in the form of two framework subprojects and an example application subproject. Semblance emerged from earlier work done in the StrutsLive framework, as it came to include a number of powerful and generically useful facilities that could potentially add a great deal of value outside the web tier. The Semblance project made it possible to divide the original StrutsLive codebase into two frameworks. Struts-dependent code would remain in StrutsLive, and the rest would move to the new Foundation framework, no longer encumbered by ties to Struts, or to the web tier in general.
[12/04/2006]

Semblance 1.0B1 Includes StrutsLive Framework
The Semblance project has announced the release of Semblance 1.0B1, which incorporates the StrutsLive framework (formerly maintained as a separate project) a new Foundation framework, and a comprehensive example application. This is a major feature release that adds support for XHTML templating, dynamic query generation, and list management, including pagination, navigation, sorting, filtering, and selection management. Please see the release notes for further details.
[11/30/2006]

Mobile & Embedded Community
The Mobile & Embedded Community is a gathering place that enables and empowers developers to collaborate and innovate, driving the evolution and adoption of the Java(TM) Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME) for mobile and embedded devices. Here you can be a part of a robust culture of developers and technology experts and find people with similar interests and goals. For more information, see our community vision.
[11/20/2006]

Facelets
Want JSF without JSP? Have a look at Facelets. "The web community is eagerly seeking a framework like Tapestry, backed by JavaServer Faces as the industry standard. While JavaServer Faces and JSP are meant to be aligned, Facelets steps outside of the JSP spec and provides a highly performant, JSF-centric view technology. Anyone who has created a JSP page will be able to do the same with Facelets. The difference is under the hood where all the burden of the JSP Vendor API is removed to more greatly enhance JSF performance and provide easy plug-and-go development."
[11/06/2006]

Facelets
Want JSF without JSP baggage? Have a look at Facelets. "The web community is eagerly seeking a framework like Tapestry, backed by JavaServer Faces as the industry standard. While JavaServer Faces and JSP are meant to be aligned, Facelets steps outside of the JSP spec and provides a highly performant, JSF-centric view technology. Anyone who has created a JSP page will be able to do the same with Facelets. The difference is under the hood where all the burden of the JSP Vendor API is removed to more greatly enhance JSF performance and provide easy plug-and-go development."
[11/06/2006]

Current CMS
The Current CMS project offers a content management system (CMS) that is the product of nine years of development, originally developed with flat files and perl, but later migrated to Java. Current CMS is a multi-user CMS with workflow, versioning and publishing capabilities. It includes a generator that prepares scaffolding including Java model and view classes, JSP, SQL create and alters... all based on simple XML configuration files. The project was also the subject of a recent java.net feature article.
[10/23/2006]

Ask the Experts: Swing
This week's Ask the Experts session centers around Swing, the popular toolkit for building GUI's for Java desktop applications. Post your questions and you'll get answers from key members of Sun's Swing, Java2D, and AWT teams, namely Scott Violet (Swing Architect), Shannon Hickey (Swing Technical Lead), Chris Campbell (Java 2D Engineer), and Oleg Sukhodolsky (AWT Technical Lead). This Ask the Experts session runs from Monday, October 16 through Friday, October 20.
[10/16/2006]

TrueLicense Library Collection
The TrueLicense Library Collection "aims at managing licensing aspects for closed source Java applications in a secure, reliable, flexible and yet easy way." The package allows you to create and verify licenses that are bound to a person, company, or any other entity, can be perpetual or granted for a specific time, and can provide a "free trial period" license functionality. Licenses use the digital signature methods of the Java Security API, and privacy of installed license content is maintained by using the password based encryption mechanisms provided by the Java Cryptography Extension. The project also offers two tutorials, the The TrueLicense Library Collection Tutorial and the Introduction to the TrueLicense Library Collection[PDF].
[10/09/2006]

Timing Framework
The Timing Framework project is a library to simplify Java animation and timing-based control. Introduced by the articles Timing is Everything and Time Again, it offers fundamental timing classes, interpolation facilities, and a set of trigger classes to facilitate starting and stopping animation based on events.
[10/02/2006]

Hudson
Need continuous integration? Check out Hudson. This project monitors executions of repeated jobs, such as software builds or automated tests. "Hudson provides an easy-to-use so-called continuous integration system, making it easier for developers to integrate changes to the project, and making it easier for users to obtain a fresh build. The automated, continoues build increases the productivity." Features include easy installation, change sets, permalinks to "latest build" and "latest successful build", RSS/e-mail integration, distributed builds, plugin support, and more
[09/25/2006]

GlueGen
Developing JNI code isn't the easiest task, but GlueGen makes it somwahat easier to manage. The project page describes GlueGen as "a tool which automatically generates the Java and JNI code necessary to call C libraries. It reads as input ANSI C header files and separate configuration files which provide control over many aspects of the glue code generation. GlueGen uses a complete ANSI C parser and an internal representation (IR) capable of representing all C types to represent the APIs for which it generates interfaces." GlueGen is used to generate several Java-to-C wrapper libraries, including JOGL and JOAL.
[09/11/2006]

Subversion Best Practices webinar
Subversion is one of your choices for version control when starting a java.net project, and now CollabNet, which powers the project hosting and collaboration facilities on java.net, has posed a one-hour webinar on Subversion Best Practices, hosted by CollabNet's Chris Clarke and Garrett Rooney. "In this one hour web seminar, you’ll get an insider’s view of how best to use Subversion’s most important functions, how to create new branches, what should be under version control, how to make atomic commits, and more."
[09/04/2006]

Cenqua
java.net partner Cenqua offers several helpful services in support of java.net projects. If your source is hosted on java.net, you can use the FishEye tool to get a web-based view of your code repository to analyze change sets, see diffs, search, and more. This feature works with both CVS- and Subversion-based repositories. Projects can also apply for a free license for Clover, a coprehensive code-coverage tool.
[08/21/2006]

Ask the Experts: JavaServer Faces
The latest week-long Ask the Experts online session focuses on JavaServer Faces, the poular technology for simplifying building user interfaces for server-side Java applications. If you have a question about JSF, stop by to get answers from Ed Burns and Roger Kitain, the co-leads of the JavaServer Faces 1.2 Specification (the version of JavaServer Faces technology in Java EE 5).
[08/14/2006]

Amateur
Started as a reaction to another compulsory paid upgrade to QuickTime Pro, Amateur is a free, open-source clone of Apple's QuickTime Player Pro written in Java, without the feature crippling and registration fees. The application uses QuickTime for Java and its most recent version, 1.0d6, implements most of the playback and editing features of Apple's player app. The current version is tested only on Mac, though a Windows version is thought to need just a few hours' work.
[08/07/2006]

Ajax4jsf
Want to write Ajax applications without having to touch JavaScript? The Ajax4jsf project leverages Java Server Faces and adds the Ajax functionality for you. "The framework is implemented using a component library that adds Ajax capability to your existing pages without needing to write any JavaScript code or needing to replace existing components with new Ajax widgets. Ajax4jsf enables page-wide Ajax support instead of the traditional component-wide support." You can use it to add Ajax to existing JSF applications, write components with Ajax support, and more.
[07/31/2006]

SwingX Web Services project
Used by the Aerith demo at JavaOne 2006, the SwingX Web Services project collects JavaBeans for interacting with web services. " Initial beans include support for several Yahoo and Google webservices such as searching news, video, images, and financial data, as well as a generic tile based mapping component." This way, you can develop your client apps that use web services with a JavaBean-aware graphical editor, such as NetBeans. The project is putting out a call for developers with knowledge of specific topic areas: "the SwingX-WS project is actively seeking new developers to enhance the existing beans and build new ones. We would especially like to see beans for accessing Google's search services, Flickr photos, Microsoft Live, MusicBrainz metadata, and enhancements to the JXMapViewer for connecting to NASA map servers. "
[07/24/2006]

jMaki
The jMaki project "is all about enabling Java developers to use JavaScript in their Java based applications as either a JSP tag library or a JSF component," by allowing mixing and matching JavaScript widgets from different Ajax frameworks. Out of the box, it provides bootstrap widgets for components from Dojo, Script.aculo.us, Yahoo UI Widgets, Spry, DHTML Goodies, and Google. A buzz page collects articles and blogs about jMaki, as well as guides and tutorials to using it.
[07/17/2006]

Sun Grid Cool Applications Contest
The Sun Grid Cool Apps Developer Challenge is offering a total of $50,000 in prizes to developers of the "coolest" apps for the Sun Grid Compute Utility. There are actually two contests: one for apps that use the Compute Server plugin for NetBeans (open to US and international participants), and another that actually runs on the grid (US participants only). The contest submission deadline is August 31, with a community vote scheduled for early September and announcement of the winners expected in mid-September.
[06/26/2006]

Project Open ESB
Highlighted in the JavaOne 2006 keynote, Project Open ESB "implements an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) runtime with sample service engines and binding components. Open ESB allows you to easily integrate enterprise applications and web services as loosely coupled composite applications. This allows you to seamlessly compose and recompose your composite applications, realizing the benefits of a true Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)."
[06/12/2006]

JGoodies Looks
The JGoodies Looks project, a subproject of the larger JGoodies effort, provides a pair of appealing look-and-feel packages for Swing. The JGoodies Windows L&F; "focuses on a precise emulation on Windows 95/98/NT/ME/2000/2003/XP/Vista" in various widgets, honoring desktop font size and screen resolution as it affects sizes, insets, and widget dimensions. Meanwhile, the Plastic, Plastic3D, and PlasticXP L&F;'s are "elegant multi-platform Look&Feels; that look good on all Windows platforms, including XP."
[06/05/2006]

Substance
The Substance project provides a "configurable and customizable production-quality Java look and feel library for Swing applications." Its latest release, version 2.3 provides support for right-to-left orientation, inverted themes and better support for dark themes, extensive watermark support, various tab improvements, a color picker, and more. A screenshot gallery helps visually convey Substance's many abilities.
[05/22/2006]

JavaOne 2006 java.net Community Corner Podcast

Bringing java.net to your speakers or headphones, the java.net Podcasts project is the home to podcasts created at java.net events. At JavaOne 2006, we'll be podcasting the mini-talks from the community corner as they happen, meaning you can subscribe to the podcast feed and get a frequently-updated series of 20-minute talks about java.net projects and other activities of interest to community members. In a "seed" episode posted in advance of JavaOne, java.net site manager Helen Chen talks about how the Community Corner works and what to expect.
[05/08/2006]

DWR 2.0
The Direct Web Remoting (DWR) project recently reached milestone 1 of version 2.0. DWR is popular for providing "easy AJAX for Java" -- making it simple to call server-side Java from client-side JavaScript by eliminating almost all boilerplate code. The new version will introduce the concept of "reverse AJAX", in which server-side Java can asynchronously call client-side JavaScript, making interactive applications much easier.
[04/24/2006]

JAXB 2.0 Project
The JAXB 2.0 Project hosts the reference implementation of the Java Architecture for XML Binding, as defined in JSR-31 (JAXB 1.0) and JSR-222 (JAXB 2.0). The project, part of Project GlassFish, is committed to provide a production-quality implementation of the spec. The JAXB codebase is written entirely in Java and runs on many different platforms.
[04/17/2006]

Ask The Experts: Java Web Start
The latest SDN Ask The Experts session focuses on Java Web Start, which allows for one-click deployment of Java software over the network, with clients receiving automatic updates of your code after the initial download. All week -- Monday, April 10 to Friday, April 14 -- Java Deployment in J2SE team members Andy Herrick, Thomas Ng, and Cheng Dan will be available to answer your questions about this popular solution for Java distribution and deployment.
[04/10/2006]

java.net Community Corner 2006
The java.net Community Corner 2006 wiki page is the home for planning java.net's presence at JavaOne 2006. We'll be offering a space for communities and projects to get together and learn about each other's activity. The community corner will once again be host to 20-minute mini-talks, and this year we will also distributing papers and abstracts from the mini-talks at the booth. You can use the wiki to propose a mini-talk, volunteer to work at the booth, and (soon) upload pictures for our java.net slideshow.
[04/03/2006]

OFBiz joins Apache Incubator
The Java Tools Community project Open For Business (OFBiz) has been accepted as an Apache Incubator project. OFBiz provides the building blocks of e-commerce applications, including catalog, customer, order, warehouse and fulfillment management functaionality. A strong community has formed around the OFBiz project, as described in a java.net success story article from 2004.
[03/20/2006]

Duke's Choice nominations
This is the last week to nominate innovative Java technologies for the Duke's Choice Awards. Nominees need to enter by filling out a submission form before Wednesay, March 15. New this year is an open selection for the favorite java.com application -- five finalists have been selected and you can vote now in this category, with balloting open until March 31.
[03/13/2006]

Java Champions
The Java Champions project recognizes leaders in the Java developer community, in "an effort to bolster and encourage this community of leaders". The champions are an informal but carefully-selected group of professional Java developers, JUG leaders, educators and authors with a common goal of advancing the Java platform. The project includes material related to the nomination and selection of champions, as well as links to online articles by or about champions.
[03/06/2006]

Ask the Experts: Java Plug-In
This week's Ask the Experts page features members of the Java Deployment Team answering questions about Java Plug-In Technology. If you're working on getting your code to run in a browser, Sun staffers Dennis Gu, Danielle Pham, and Mike Lei will be taking your questions all week.
[02/27/2006]

Dalma
The Dalma Workflow Engine offers a means of doing "continuations" - meaning to capture and suspend the state of a thread, continuing it potentially much later and potentially in another JVM entirely. "While functional programming languages typically have a built-in support for continuation, procedural programming languages like Java usually doesn't. Because of this, the use of continuation has been largely limited to computer scientists... While continuation itself will likely to remain as one of the most difficult programming concepts to understand, there are many applications of it that are useful for general developer audience." One such use is illustrated in Kohsuke Kawaguchi's blog Dalma to automate java.net project approval process.
[02/20/2006]

Mustang Regressions Challenge
Sun is seeking regression reports in the Mustang Regressions Challenge. Every verified regression submitted before March 31 wins a t-shirt, and the best five (as judged by Sun engineering and QA) win a new Ultra 20 workstation. There's more information in the FAQ, a forum for discussing the challenge, and a blog about its goals in Announcing the Mustang regressions challenge.
[02/06/2006]

Where We Are with the JDK
Recapping the status of JDK development, Ray Gans' blog entry Where We Are with the JDK also spells out the JDK team's plans going forward. Mustang (Java SE 6) is expected to go beta in February, with another beta in Summer, with a final release this Autumn. Meanwhile, the Dolphin (Java SE 7) project is expected to open this Spring, releasing its snapshots in parallel with Mustang. While the window is closing to Mustang fixes, it's now time to start thinking about features and start discussing them on the Java SE Forum.
[01/30/2006]

2006 Duke's Choice Awards - Now Accepting Nominations
The search is underway for the best and most innovative uses of Java technology -- nominations for the 2006 Duke's Choice Awards are now being accepted, with a submission deadline of March 15. The "Dukies" celebrate innovation in Java development, putting small developers on an equal footing with big companies. Winners are recognized at the JavaOne keynote and receive a statuette of "Duke", the Java technology mascot. Last year's winners included java.net's JDDAC project.
[01/23/2006]

JXTA J2SE Reference Implementation Use Cases
JXTA Community member Vanessa Williams writes: "while surfing around looking for research papers on JXTA, I came across a paper by Nicolas Theodoloz which contained in an appendix a reverse-engineered set of use cases for the J2SE reference implementation. With his permission, I have duplicated these in Wiki format and added them to the JXTA Wiki." This JXTA J2SE Reference Implementation Use Cases wiki page iterates through the steps required for working with discovery services (including publishing and getting advertisements, providing error notifications and becoming a peer), resolver services, pipe services, rendez-vous services, and more. "Although they are based on version 2.1.1, and are not entirely complete, I have already found them invaluable. It's my hope that the community will help in updating and extending them so that we can all share a good reference to what's really going on inside the code."
[01/16/2006]

JavaOne 2006: java.net Community Corner
The java.net Community Corner 2006 wiki page is the home for planning java.net's presence at JavaOne 2006. We'll be offering a space for communities and projects to get together and learn about each other's activity. The community corner will once again be host to 20-minute mini-talks, and this year we will also distributing papers and abstracts from the mini-talks at the booth. You can use the wiki to propose a mini-talk, volunteer to work at the booth, and (soon) upload pictures for our java.net slideshow.
[01/09/2006]

FeedPod
Don't have time to offer a podcast version of your blog? Not to worry. The FeedPod project offers "a Text-To-Speech RSS/ATOM Newsfeed reader." This means that "You can use FeedPod as a personal feed reader. [Or] you can integrate FeedPod into you Portal site and offer audio subscriptions and 'Listen Now' links. You can use FeedPod on your site to offer a PodCast of your blog." FeedPod is packaged as a pair of two WAR files that you deploy to your servlet container, and has been tested on Win32, Fedora Core 3, and Solaris 10.
[01/02/2006]

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]