For the last several years, Mobility has been relegated to a room on the Esplanade level, filled to over-capacity with attendees lining the walls and sitting in the aisles. This year the Mobility General Session was moved to the "big tent" as it's called - the same room used for the other general sessions, a long overdue move and a good thing.
The Mobility General Session was delivered by Jeet Kaul, VP of Sun's Consumer Systems Group and a long-time Sun employee. Jeet started his career as a developer, so who better to deliver the session at the Java Developers Conference? The theme for the session was "Java Wherever You Are", and with all the promotion in the General Session earlier in the day, people are coming to realize just how universal Java is. The reality is that Java ME is likely the most universal of the four Java platforms, found in most mobile phones as all Java developers are aware, but also in places like the Amazon Kindle, cable set-top boxes, and Blu-Ray players like the Sony PS3.
Jeet started the session by contrasting the constant connectivity of his two daughters in comparison to his own limited online existence; a familiar situation to many of us with teenage children. They take for granted the always-connected aspect of their lives, enabled by such things as wifi, SMS, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, IM, MSN, and e-mail. While many eschew the connected life, it can allow us to be closer to our family, friends and business associates as (new Facebook member) Jeet attested.
The session shifted into demo mode quickly (and flawlessly) first with Sam Altman of Loopt. Loopt is definitely one of a "new" class of applications -- a mashup of existing services spun over the web and mobile carrier networks with some unique value-add. The service exists in two user-visible forms: a Facebook widget and a mobile application written for the Java ME platform. The mobile application uses location-based technology to automatically deliver updates on the location and status of your friends. It also includes geo-coded information left by your friends, and information such as photos and notes for others to view on the map. One of the most useful features is a proximity trigger -- an SMS message sent by the Loopt system when a friend enters your defined sphere. All privacy is under the control of the user, in a model similar to that of Facebook -- you choose your friends. As for mobile technology -- Loopt requirements are modest -- MIDP 2.0 / CLDC 1.1, JSR 179 Location for mapping and geo-coding, JSR 135 MultiMedia APIs for camera control and JSR 75 PIM and File for address book access. Loopt is available on the Sprint network, but expect to see it on considerably more networks in the near future.
Anyone who has programmed using the Mobility GUI ( javax.microedition.lcdui) will soon have a great new choice. Yoav Barel of Sun Microsystems joined Jeet to discuss LWUIT - the Light-Weight User Interface Toolkit. NetBeans has offered a Mobility Bundle for some time. One of the first feature additions to the bundle was the UI flow designer, which makes it easier to create screens and provide navigation between screens, but is still lcdui-based. A more recent addition to the NetBeans Mobility Bundle is support for JSR 248, Mobile Services Architecture (MSA), an "umbrella" standard mandating support for a collection of JSRs and providing clarifications of aspects of those JSRs. MSA includes Scalable 2D Vector Graphics and 3D Graphics among its 17 JSRs. While these 2 JSRs make it easier in theory to build an attractive mobile GUI, in practice there has been no such mobile GUI, until now. The LWUIT includes a far more attractive UI, widgets, user-selectable themes, and a set of transitions previously only available on the desktop. Yoav demonstrated LWUIT running on a collection of current mass market devices including a modest Nokia System 40 device. In the near future LWUIT will be available as an open source project on java.net. It is available now as part of the Sprint WTK 3.3.
And speaking of Sprint, a JavaOne Mobility session would not be complete without Sprint. Sun and Sprint have a long partnership with the Java ME platform. Sprint was the first US carrier to launch a Java ME handset (2001). Sprint was the first US carrier to support over-the-air (OTA) downloads of Java ME applications (2002). Sprint's Mobile Application Developer program started in 2001 and has over 150,000 registered members. Kevin Packingham of Sprint joined Jeet to talk about their plans for the near future. Kevin announced that Sprint will launch the Samsung Instinct -- the first fully touch screen-enabled Java ME handset with OTA, GPS support and full multimedia streaming (as in 30 fps). The Instinct has had great reviews on various web sites such as Engadget and Gizmodo. This device will enhance Sprint's mobile offerings that include Music, TV and sports content.
In the next segment, Christopher David of Sony Ericsson and Jeet talked MSA. As mentioned earlier MSA is an umbrella standard that defines a feature-rich Java ME runtime environment. It covers the areas of communications, graphics, security and commerce, application connectivity, and personal information. It should be viewed as the platform for Java ME development. Sony Ericsson's latest devices -- based on their JP-8 platform -- are full MSA devices, additionally offering true multitasking. There are presently 14 different MSA devices available from Sony Ericsson and more are expected. According to Christopher the only thing missing from the platform are 3rd-party applications that offer a high degree of content integration -- applications that will take advantage of the rich set of APIs offered by the MSA platform. This reinforces the "Think It. Make It. Sell It." tag line in the conference center.
Christopher and Jeet were joined by Philippe Lucas of Orange, a major European carrier. The 3 parties have been in discussion for some time, addressing Java ME fragmentation. This has been an issue in the mobile market for a number of years. Devices support a collection of Java ME JSRs established at their time of manufacture. An application requires a set of JSRs to be present on the device in order to install and execute successfully. The challenge is to create an application that can be run on the largest number of devices in order to maximize the potential customer base. If the application is overly conservative in its JSR requirements, features are sacrificed; if the application requires a large number of JSRs on the device to support its feature set, the potential customer base shrinks to a level that may not be economically viable. The good news is that Orange, Sun and Sony Ericsson are in active discussion with each other, looking for solutions, and are beginning to engage other carriers and manufacturers. MSA will be part of the solution, as it defines a rich set of known JSRs for developers. Another part of the solution will be the Java Verified Program (JVP), to test applications and offer secure signing of the applications. Signed applications will offer the consumer and carriers an assurance of quality and operability. The public disclosure today of the meetings, their nature, and future plans are a positive step for the developer community.
At this point of the presentation Jeet turned to that other Java platform - the oft-forgotten Java Card. Java Card saw 1.2 billion deployments in the past year in such places as mobile phones, national government passports, and credit cards. Maybe it is the most universal Java platform? I'll leave that for marketing to decide. In March 2008, the Java Card 3.0 specification was released. It now includes 2 features from Java SE - generics and annotations. The specification also includes multithreading capability and a CLDC implementation with a servlet / TCP / IP stack. Java Card now provides secure web services on that 1 sq cm of gold on the plastic card. Does this mean that a future server farm could be carried in your wallet?
Anybody want a Sony PS3 for a few hours of programming? Xavier Chanay of Gemalto, Java Card's largest licensee, was on-hand to announce the JavaOne programmer challenge for Java Card. The prize is a Sony PS3, to be awarded on stage Friday during the James Gosling "toy show". The challenge is to develop a Java Card 3.0 application to control a robotic tank with your own Java code. Tanks will compete head-to-head, scoring points for various actions. The top two tanks will battle for the PS3 on Friday. Check out the tank challenge in the Pavilion space.
One of the last speakers on stage with Jeet was Bill Sheppard. Bill is Sun's Chief Media Officer, focusing on TV, Cable, and DVD technology. The big news is of course Blu-ray; we're now down to one high-definition video technology, and that technology includes Java. New players are on the way, all the studios are on board and disc sales are up 350% - good news for Java developers. To take advantage of this high-growth market, Bill announced that NetBeans 6.5 will include the ability to create Blu-ray content, an emulator based on WinDVD to exercise your content, and the ability to create a disc image for burning. Look for Bill and other like-minded individuals at the Digital Living Room in the Pavilion.
Last was a demonstration of Project Hydrazine. The project is a way to enable developers to rapidly build and deploy services. The services platform consists of multiple service runtimes and service enablers combined with multiple client frameworks. This should enable the rapid creation and deployment of personalized, context-based services across multiple screens -- desktop, browser, mobile device. One of the two Project Hydrazine demonstrations was simple and powerful -- a personalized web page presented the current services deployed on a user's mobile device and a listing of services available for the mobile device. Dragging a new service to the deployed services section of the web page caused the new service to be auto-magically deployed on the real mobile device. It all happened in less than 30s - simple and powerful.
Jeet wrapped up his first Mobility General Session recapping the major points - MSA as the standard developer platform backed by Sun, manufacturers, and carriers, Java Card 3.0 for security and commerce, Blu-ray development tools, Project Hydrazine with its ease of use for service creation, and deployment and LWUIT. The technology and tools get better and the community gets bigger. Thanks for the bigger room.
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