So far, it's been a great JavaOne conference for technical talks. If you attended Bob Brewin's general session on Tuesday, you saw all sorts of neat stuff based on how Java technology works in your digital life.
Of course, the one that I notice the most these days is when I watch Blu-ray movies and the BD-J content comes up -- my daughter can't stop watching Cars on Blu-ray. But personally, I can't wait until I can start using the NetBeans IDE to add some BD-J content to all the home movies that I've been converting and reconverting since the 1970s. I'm a perfectionist -- I'm not content with those Ken Burns-style iPhoto effects that always seem to zoom in on my stomach (nothing to see there, folks!) and casually crop off my head.
And in case you missed it, JavaFX applets also made their debut in Tuesday afternoon's technical general session as well. It's encouraging to see what can be done with JavaFX, so when it debuts this fall on the desktop, I'm sure it will have plenty of capabilities that native Swing programmers can easily grasp onto. By far, however, one of the neatest demos to watch was Brewin's Tuesday afternoon general session, when Ken Russell and Jasper Potts were able to pull the JavaFX applet from the browser and store it on the desktop. And yes, unlike what happened at the morning general session, this demo worked beautifully. And the spinning movies demos was pretty cool also.
By the way, I get this question a lot on the JavaFX mobile front: "When is Sun going to build their own phone?" Well, the answer is that we're not planning to, and I think that was mentioned again in one of the general sessions. Sun intends to partner with the OS vendors to provide a full software stack. We're going to be providing the JavaFX software to various phone vendors to use on their phones.
By the way, did you catch that Java technology is in the Amazon Kindle? Personally, I didn't know that -- and since I'm technically a Sun marketer, I'm supposed to know that, so this is a little embarrassing to mention -- but I'll claim ignorance because I haven't been able to even touch one yet. They keep flying off the shelves as soon as they're available. Maybe one of these days I can convince my boss into expensing one. The Livescribe, on the other hand -- well, I haven't tried that yet either, but I can probably get one myself and justify it by saying it's for my children's educational development. Yeah, that'll convince my wife...
Back to desktop for a moment: If you haven't had a chance to download the Java SE 6 Update 10 beta, be sure to give it a try. There are all sorts of new features in there that really set the direction of where Java technology is headed in the future.
My personal favorite is the Java Kernel, which allows you to download and use a minimal subset of Java technology necessary to run your program without having to wait for the entire JRE to download. Then, any additional necessary libraries are downloaded in the background while the application is already running. Also, the Nimbus look and feel is pretty slick as well, especially when you bundle it with that new accelerated graphics pipeline that Java SE 6 Update 10 offers.
One final note: If you're on Facebook, be sure to join the groups: "JavaOne" or "JavaOne 2008" or "JavaOne in Second Life." And if you're Twittering, you can tune into "sdnjavaone2008" or "JavaOne2008" for the latest updates. Or check the JavaOne conference home page in the Participate section at the upper right, and check the drop-down menu under Social Media.
So, enjoy your Thursday, and I'll see you again on the final day of the 2008 JavaOne conference.
|
