Writing web applications with browser clients has never looked so good. BEA's new WebLogic Workshop has it's own very custom look and feel, and it appears to support visual design of not just web forms, but application logic. Definitely one of the most striking Swing applications we've ever seen.

You can visit the WebLogic Workshop at: www.bea.com/products/weblogic/workshop

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Andrew Sazonov was kind enough to send us pointers to several applications: the Productivity! plug-in for JBuilder, created by AMIS Software, and several other applications developers from AMIS Software have took part in - the Change Companion project (used for change activities analysis), and NewOSCAR, an electronic catalog. On the AMIS web site, there's also an interesting page about a simulation project for a hardware device called "Language Boy". The simulation was written with Swing, of course!

You can visit AMIS Software at: www.softamis.com

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With the possible exception of the United States, the attention of the entire planet was focused on World Cup soccer. And how did the world get the very latest data about this event? With an applet of course! The Philips Matchcast Applet provided a dynamic view of matches in progress and enough information and statistics about the players to keep fans busy full time. And if you're interested in reviewing a little history that's made a big impression on atleast some of us here in the USA, check out our final game. It's been more than 70 years since the last time we made it as far as the quarter finals. Maybe we'll be there again in 2006!

You can visit Yahoo's MatchCast applet at: fifaworldcup.yahoo.com/en

While my memories of high school are getting dim, the only computer on the premises that I can recall was a DEC PDP-8 that supported Basic and two (no waiting!) Teletype terminals. Things have, of course, changed since then, computers are becoming more central to the educational process every year.

Elluminate's vClass virtual class room product is a great example of this trend. This Java2 product allows remote students to work with a teacher or mentor using all the latest tricks of the trade: full 2-way audio, direct text messaging and a shared, interactive whiteboard. This web started application is being deployed at schools all over the country and we're told it will be on over a million desktops before the next school year comes to a close.

You can visit Elluminate at: www.elluminate.com

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Say you've decided that you want to keep tabs on your dog while you're at work. You're an engineer, so the only acceptable way to handle this problem is to install a video camera in the house and then broadcast a snapshot every 60 seconds or so on the internet. That way you'll be able to keep tabs on the old hound from anywhere in the world. And such a system wouldn't be complete unless you could remote control the camera and chat with other folks watching Fido snooze on the couch.

Fortunately, you will not need to code this system yourself. A new company called 321cam provides your Java solution for both broadcasting, viewing, even shared whiteboard. Check it out:

You can visit 321cam at: www.321cam.com

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A new look and feel, called "Metouia", was announced on jsurfer.com recently. It's just been released under the LGPL license. It was created by Taoufik Romdhane who based Metouia on the venerable Kunststoff look and feel.

Note also: you'll find a nice compendium of Swing look and feels at a site called javootoo.com:

You can check out the Metouia L&F at: mlf.sourceforge.net

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Here's a new suite of Java Web Started apps called "Universal Village Community" (UVC). If you're wondering if this application might be of some use to you, see if you can't unify your needs with this product description: "UVC will help you to organise your life on both a personal and a professional level and is suitable for both home and office use." UVC is an application that includes a calendar, address book, an instant messsenger, an events tracker, and a task management system.

After you've registered the app can be launched via Java Web Start. You can also run the IM client in your browser if you've got the latest java.

You can visit the Universal Village Community at: www.uvc.ca

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If you download lots of files or even just a few very large files, a download accelerator/manager application can improve your quality of life considerably. These application s support all kinds of helpful features like creating several connections to a (slow) server and pulling several streams of data down in parallel, queing up downloads for later, start/stop/pause, etc..

Lasse Bay sent us a pointer to a 1.4 based HTTP/FTP download accelerator/manager application he's developed called Lightning Load. The latest version even allows for remote administration of managed downloads just in case you happen to be at, say, work while your home machine is busy hoovering files.

The app is free so why not, uh, download it!

You can visit Lightning Load at: www.exclusivej.dk/lightning

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Intellisys is shipping two project management tools: Project Desktop is a full-featured single-user project management tool, and Project Enterprise is a distributed multi-user project management system. I realize that many of our readers are heads-down developers who shudder at the thought of well-armed project managers scheduling and tracking their progress. It looks like Intelllisys has is doing quite well appealing to project managers - Intellisys Project Desktop had over two thousand downloads last week on download.com!

You can visit Intellisys at: www.webintellisys.com

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Alan Weiler from Kallisto Productions provided this tidy description of their new Java authoring tool. "Kallisto Composer, is an authoring tool combining some of the features from both Director and Powerpoint. It allows designers to assemble hand-crafted interfaces and multimedia presentations." Composer generates files that can be played back with a small Java applet called Kallisto Presenter that runs on every version of browser Java you'd imagine as well as Personal Java implementations for smaller devices, like PDAs. As you can see, the Composer GUI takes full advantage of Swing and Java2D and shows a modest resemblance to another flashy tool we will not mention here.

You can check out Kallisto Composer at: www.kallisto.com/presenter/present.html

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Ben Berger was kind enough to send us this description of the product that the team of designers and developers at Unicorn Solutions have created. "Unicorn has a technology that understands enterprise data by relating obscure data formats to standard business vocabulary. Unicorn's product, Coherence, is an Active Repository & Thesaurus for enterprise data which uses a Business Model as a unified lens onto the thousands of data formats (schemas) found in the average enterprise and automates translation between the formats."

You can visit Unicorn Solutions at: www.unicorn.com

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Thomas Singer was kind enough to send us a note about his new friendly CVS front-end, SmartCVS. If you're not inclined to sort out the myriad command-line options for CVS then this tool is definitely worth a look. There's a free version, and a commercial one, and you can launch an evaluation copy with web start. Version 2 is available today, so give it a click.

You can visit SmartCVS at: www.smartcvs.com

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I am pleased to report that all known developers of $600 "computer driven, life-size, android robot heads" use Java to write the control software user interfaces.

The robot head you see in the photos below is known as Robot Maxamillian (R.Max) and was created by Patrick M. Rael. Why would someone mount video cameras and servos in a hollow fiberglass mannequin head and then bring the whole complex to life with a computer? This quote from Pat's home page says it all pretty simply:

"R. Max is a computerized android robot head. I built it to research Android and Robotics technology, and to answer the question: 'How complex and costly are Android robot heads'? Answer: 'Not too complex nor costly for an entry level android head'". -Pat

You can visit R.Max at: www.howtoandroid.com

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