What's the Buzz?
Today was Laurie Tolson's first opportunity to deliver the Mobility and Device General Session and it played well to a packed house. The presentations mantra was "Volume Creates Opportunity" and having followed Java ME et. al. for four years, there is more volume and opportunity than ever. The volume is enormous: 2.1 billion Java-enabled handsets and 976 million new shipments predicted for this year (2007), 2.5 billion Java Cards shipped, 4 million Blu-Ray devices (in the first 6 months) and 7 million set-top boxes. Opportunity for content, tools, applications and integration abound.
Throughout the session Laurie shared the stage with a number of Java luminaries who demonstrated the leading edge of Java ME technology.
MSA, It's Official
At the end of 2006 the JCP ratified JSR 248 - Mobile Services Architecture (MSA). MSA is an umbrella JSR, it defines a minimum collection of JSRs that constitute a compliant run-time environment. The MSA JSR includes existing JSRs in the areas of Security and Commerce, Graphics, Communications, Personal information and Application Connectivity, and it also clarifies some optional characteristics of those existing JSRs. MSA defines a full-featured Java ME environment.
"Mobile is Global" - Jason Ling
At this point Laurie introduced Jason Ling , Head of Mobile Products and Technology for MySpace. MySpace is the largest social network in the US with more than 180 million profiles. They have partnered with Cingular in the US to enable MySpace access from mobile devices. Using their mobile application, users can push photos captured on the device to their online profile. When asked "Why Java ME?", Jason's answer was simply, "Java is global".
Jason was followed by Martin Wrigley of Orange/France Telecom. Orange provides mobile, broadband and data services across Europe. They plan to launch an application shop to their 100 million subscribers. To simplify the roll-out of the application shop and provide a standard mobile platform for developers, all new phones will be required to be MSA compliant.
Sony Ericsson and Nokia are the first manufacturers to announce MSA devices. A pre-production Sony Ericsson Z750 unit was presented to Tolson as a demonstration of Orange's commitment to Java ME and MSA.
Vincent Hardy, well known for his work in Java ME graphics, demonstrated an interesting piece of work. Vincent had ported a Java SE application to the Java ME platform, enhancing the user interface with some SVG content. The application loads photos captured on the device to your flickr account, including location based services (LBS) for use with Yahoo Maps. The application is an extremely simple way to create a "live" photo album. The application makes use of MMAPI, SVG, LBS, Bluetooth and Web Services JSRs, in addition to the essential CLDC and MIDP packages. Vincent refined the user interface using a selection of SVG content. NetBeans is able to make direct use of SVG content. The SVG content was created using industry standard design tools (Illustrator or Photoshop for example) and the Ikivo animation tool to finalize the SVG content. At the end of the demonstration Vincent took a picture for inclusion on his flickr site. We'll return to this later.
Opportunities in TV
Bill Sheppard of Sun Microsystems has long worked in the area of digital entertainment. The TV industry is very standards-focused, and for good reason. The digital entertainment industry covers content creators, TV manufacturers, cable operators, DVD players and broadcasters. There are more than 100 participants, with some offering numerous products. The combinations reach into the 1000's, and without rigorous standards the industry would fail.
Blu-Ray players and discs entered production at the end of 2006, with 7 of 8 Hollywood studios supporting the standard. All Blu-Ray players incorporate a Java runtime environment.
Set-top boxes deploying OCAP are also making their way into the US market. OCAP is a Personal Basis Profile (PBP) based platform. At present, this represents 7 million Java ME devices.
Bill concluded his section of the session with a demonstration of an OCAP set-top box with a dynamic content bar. The content of the bar can be customized by the user, drawing from various RSS feeds.
Thursday is TV day at JavaOne, and the presentation will cover cable, broadcast, satellite, Blu-Ray Disc and IPTV. Come and join in the fun.
Content Convergence
Bart Calder of Sun Microsystems briefly took the stage with Laurie to demonstrate an OCAP-based application. The demonstration completed the flickr / Yahoo Maps mash-up started by Vincent Hardy. The OCAP application accessed Vincent's flickr account, displaying photos and maps on the TV. Included in the photo album was the photo taken by Vincent, complete with the location identified on the Yahoo Map.
Coming Attractions
Tim Cramer of Sun Microsystems took the stage to offer more details on the big news of the conference: JavaFX and in particular, JavaFX Mobile. Existing mobile applications are layered on Java ME and in the near future will include MSA. The Java ME environment in turn runs on some hosted OS, such as Microsoft Windows, Symbian or Linux. While this has allowed the Java ME platform to proliferate, it has also created challenges.
JavaFX Mobile is a complete and integrated software system. It includes a Linux kernel, Java ME environment with MSA, and a complete telephony stack. All APIs are Java-only.
JavaFX Mobile will be available through the Sun Partner Advantage Mobile Initiative and Sun Developer Network.
Sun Distinguished Engineer Nedim Fresko picked up where Tim left off, offering more details on JavaFX and JavaFX Mobile.
Presently, there is a service convergence with respect to interactive content and Java. There are some issues of deployment due to variations in the underlying OS and Java platform (ME v. SE, CLDC v. CDC). The current deployment instances are: mobile devices, home entertainment, JavaFX Mobile, and Desktop. Across all the deployment instances are 3 layers: interactive content, a Java runtime environment, and OS.
In order to achieve the goal of a compelling user experience and Rich Internet Applications (RIA), the JavaFX Framework is added to both the Java ME and Java SE environments. JavaFX Script is then introduced to generate the interactive content. Finally, the specifics of each instance with respect to the JavaFX Framework and Java environment were clarified. On mobile devices, CLDC and MIDP will be the Java ME components and the JavaFX Framework will be layered on MSA and in particular SVG. Home entertainment instances will use CDC of Java ME fame and the JavaFX Framework will layer on PBP. The new JavaFX Mobile instance is also a Java ME runtime using CDC with the JavaFX Framework layered on AGUI (JSR 209). Finally, the desktop instance will make use of the 2D and 3D features of Java SE.
Nedim concluded the JavaFX brief with an overview of JavaFX. JavaFX is a suite of products. The JavaFX Authoring Tools make use of JavaFX Script which in turn layer on Java APIs and FX Services.
Wrap up
Laurie returned to the stage to conclude the session. Following the session mantra, "Volume Creates Opportunity", there is now more than at any other time, more than sufficient volume to create tremendous possibilities and opportunities in the Java ME environment. Get the NetBeans Mobility Pack and get involved with the community.
Note to the organizers: next year we're going to need a bigger room.
|
