Home: www.puzzlepirates.com

I have yet to exchange email or just talk about this gorgeous looking web-started game without lapsing into pirate-speak. The Puzzle Pirates web site indulges in the lingo right from the moment ye hoist yer anchor and set sail (it's almost impossible to resist, ay): "Avast Mateys! Here we be, nearly a month into ye Beta and we say that the ship, she sails well."

Puzzle Pirates is a massively multi-player online role-playing game with all the trimmings, not the least of which is beautiful artwork. Aside from online socializing your pirate sails and fights (and drinks rum) and solves puzzle games that look roughly like Tetris. As of this writing (September 2003) they're reporting 20,000 registered players and about 2,500 players per day.

See you on the seven seas, yo ho ho...

(note: click on the images for larger views)

Home: www.jbeam.com

jBEAM is an open, component based, measurement analysis and visualization system. It can be extended with PlugIns that are built to the international Automotive industry ASAM-CEA standard. It's web started and available in five languages, including Chinese!

Home: www.sygem.com

WebPhotoWorks is an Image Processing/Painting app created by Simon Jewell over the last year or so. Simon confidently characterized his app as a "PaintShopPro beater", and there's no arguing with the rich selection of features for working with images, including support for scanning, printing, sending images in email, drawing, and so on. This app isn't pure Java, there's some native Win32 code for image loading and for accessing scanners (using TWAIN). If you're interested in taking a look at WebPhotoWorks, please send Simon an email at simon@sygem.com

Home: www.b-gallery.biz

B*Gallery is a tool for creating HTML-based web photo galleries like this one. Version 2.1, which was released recently, introduces a Theme Editor and a publicly exposed HTML template framework that allows for full customization of the published HTML. Automatic lossless rotation of JPEG images is also new in this version. This is a commercial application, a free evaluation copy is available.

Home: www.auctionsieve.com

If you're even a casual user of eBay, AuctionSieve is a nice way to search for auction bargains. Neville Ridley-Smith (email: neville@auctionsieve.com), who created AuctionSieve, annnounced the app this way: "Collector's rejoice! - announcing the hottest new tool for eBay."

AuctionSieve is good at managing searching, grouping and prioritizing. There's even support for finding hidden bargains "behind bad auction titles". It's always good to see a new rich web service client, particularly one with as broad appeal as AuctionSieve.

Home: jfract.free.fr

JFract is a pretty complete tool for creating, archiving, exploring and even making movies of fractals. It was written by Guillaume Rousseau (email: igolus@free.fr) who's been very patient with us here at the Swing Connection! The jFract screenshots show both the web started tool and a few of the fractal images Guillaume has created with the tool and then refined with a little Photoshop post procesing magic.

Home: www.servoy.com

Servoy is a little Dutch company with an eponymous tool for generating database apps. Their web site sums up the product nicely: "Servoy is an application development and deployment environment heavily focused on database applications. Servoy consists of a powerful GUI designer, fully event driven and scriptable through JavaScript, to help you build your applications much faster than in any other development environment."

Home: www.aokabc.com

Here's a full featured commercial 100% Pure Java spreadsheet from a company called AOK - "Advent Online Knowledge". This is a new Java technology-based version of a longstanding product that had originally been written in Fortran and C for classic old platforms like VAX/VMS, Prime's Primos/UX, and many others. The new web started version runs wherever Java does.

Home: facet.unc.edu

FACET, the File And Commentary Exchange Tool, is just one of the applications created by David "Uncle Dave" Moffat (email: uncle_dave@unc.edu), who's an application developer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You'll find Dave's complete portofolio here — it's well worth a look. Dave sent us this description of FACET: "FACET manages online collaborative writing -- the paperless creation, submission, storage and sharing of documents and critiques. Typical applications of FACET include peer-reviewed writing exercises in English composition, and collaborative proposal-writing. FACET participants can be organized into private groups (such as classes), each group having a private document repository and message board."

Home: www.sourcecafe.com

Dennis Lee (email: dlee@sourcecafe.com) from EJD Technologies sent us the following description of SourceCafe: "SourceCafe is a Java qSource Code Generator that generates web applications from a database schema. The code generation process is automated and fully customizable. SourceCafe simplifies multi-tier web application development by generating a working prototype in a matter of minutes. The generated code has no dependency on SourceCafe. Developers are free to add business specific logic to make it a complete product."

"Modern Web applications consist of a multiple layer of components. Typically, it is very tedious and time-consuming to develop these components. SourceCafe automatically generates all those components for web application - business logic (JavaBeans or Enterprise JavaBeans), database access code, SQL queries, dynamic user interface pages for web browser or cell phone, user interface control code and XML deployment descriptor."

Home: xito.sourceforge.net/projects/pod

POD is the Portable Object Desktop, it's one of the projects being developed at xito.org. POD provides an innovative extensible GUI environment for launching and managing applets and web started apps. POD isn't a complete desktop replacement (not yet!), as you can see in some of the screenshots below its compact launcher GUI can be configured to occupy one corner of the screen and can peacefully coexist with the native desktop.

The xito.org site is also home to a pair of handy web started apps: Asteroids and a text editor.

Home: www.cocurea.com

Here's a nice Java2 crossword puzzle applet that's aimed at users who are just learning English. The hints all include English grammer constraints, like "7 Down - verb (in past simple/past participle form) to (cause to) arrive at a place after moving down through the air: The report first _____ on my desk this morning". (Ahem, I still don't know what a participle is :-)

Home: qform.sourceforge.net

QueryForm is a GPL'd open source GUI database front-end that, in the words of developer Dave Glasser (email: dglasser@pobox.com), "uses table metadata to build forms on-the-fly through which you can enter queries, browse results, and add, update or delete rows".

The tool is very flexible, for example, Resultsets can be exported to CSV or INSERT statements, and users can easily tailor the results by eliminating columns, or replacing columns with a literal value. There's a great deal more to learn about QueryForm and we recommend that you browse the site and take the tool on a test drive. Being the shallow user-interface-types that we are here at the Swing Connection, we thought you'd like to know that the QueryForm screenshots are a nice example of the free Oyoaha look and feel. Try saying that three times without smiling.

(note: click on the images for larger views)

Home: www.fantasyhunt.com

This has got to be the most unusual networked remote control solar powered robot game system I've ever seen. Members pay $4.95 a month to access a network of remote control solar powered TV cameras that have been set up in wildlife habitats. Members compete in tournaments and scavenger hunts by waiting and watching and snapping pictures from the comfort of their Java technology-enabled computers. The process is expedited by large feeders mounted near the cameras - they're the big boxes on spindly legs you can see in some of the pictures.

FantasyHunt is a rare breed, a successful dot com. In July they had 9.4 million hits, about 166,000 unique visitors, and they are quickly approaching 40,000 registered members. To find out more check out the site, check out the critters, and take a look at this news story from the Austin American Statesman.