Lots of new things - PHP. Check out the new developer center, NetBeans PHP video, PHP learning trail and a great PHP blog. More...

Awesome news for Java-lovin' humanitarians (hopefully, all of us!). 

Ya'll remember my prestigious annual Duke's Choice Awards? I'm super stoked for the announcement of this year's Medical Solutions winner:

The big kahuna, James Gosling, and his tech leadership posse have selected a team of students from the University of the Philippines, Diliman for their Expert System for Poisoning, or ESP.

ESP, made by Diana Bandojo, Maria Jaymee Gatapia and Reggie Santos, is a Java-platform application that allows doctors in remote areas to access a poisoning database for symptoms and solutions through their mobile phones. This means quicker treatment in more places!

This is GREAT news, not just for the Philippines' suffering doctor-to-patient ratio (1:80,000!), but for the entire Java community. These genius students have found a way to save human lives using the our fave programming language.

Really, guys... I can't think of a cooler use of Java.

So proud, I could cry!

P.S - I look good on those trophies, no? ;]

Good morning! I saw this yesterday and I thought it was too cool not to share being that it combined two things I think are neat (Bob Dylan and typography).  Turn up the volume and enjoy!   

Quick breaking development... So exciting I just head to share... James Gosling sent me an email.

For the uninitaited: Java is to James what Athena is to Zeus.

His picture (James', not Zeus') is on the wall of the Computer Science lab in my local high school.

The email. It contained the following words:

"I'll be there!"

(happy) sigh.

Please note the "!"

(double) (happy) sigh. 

I'm working on this proposal.

James thinks it's a reasonably OK idea.

He's going to come to a meeting on Monday to tell some important people that. 

I'm really gunning for this one, you guys. I really want to see it happen. So bad I can taste it.

James is coming. The guns don't get any bigger than that.

But I don't want to jinx it.

So I'm gonna keep my figners crossed until then.

(which  makes it a little hard to type...)

:-)

NetBeans IDE 6.5 Milestone 1 is now available. The New and Noteworthy feature list certainly makes it worthy for the install - comprehensive PHP support (Editor Screencast and PHP Learning Trail), JavaScript Debugger, Groovy Editor, Grails support and Numerous improvements in other areas are some of them.

Let's get started!

1. Download NetBeans 6.5 M1. Installation is pretty straight-forward and I customized it with the following options:
   
   
   
   After a simple installation process, check the "About" box as:
   
   
   
   
   
2. GlassFish v3 plug-in and TP2 is baked into the main release and so it is pre-configured for you. No need to install the additional plugin.
   
   This blog walks you through creating a simple Rails app and shows the nice improvements along the way.
   
3. Let's create a simple Rails app:
   
   
   
   Notice, GlassFish v3 is chosen as the default Server.
4. Specify the database connection as:
   
   
   
   and click on "Finish". NetBeans is bundled with JRuby 1.1.2 and Rails 2.1.0.
   
5. Start MySQL as "sudo mysqld_safe --user root".
6. Running Rake commands from within is more natural now. Right-click on the project and select "Run/Debug Rake Task ..."
   
   
   
   The dialog shows all the Rails rake tasks available. Typing the Rake command prunes the list matching
   the pattern and shows:
   
   
   
   Type "db:create" and select "Run".
   
7. Create a new Scaffold by right-clicking on "Project" and selecting "Generate..." and entering the value as shown:
   
   
   
   and clicking on "OK".
   
8. Migrate the database by invoking Rake command as shown:
   
   
   
   and selecting "Run".
   
9. Right-select the project and select "Run" as shown:
   
   
   
   The default App Server page at "http://localhost:8080" is shown. This will be updated to "http://localhost:8080/RailsApplication19" which is the default Rails page for the final release.
   
10. After adding couple of entries the final output looks like:
    
    

With NetBeans 6.5, you can easily run your Rails applications on GlassFish v3 by taking most of the defaults. Rails powered by the GlassFish Application Server explains the reasons to do so.
Subsequent blog entries will highlight other aspects of NetBeans IDE 6.5 M1.

Technorati: netbeans glassfish v3 rubyonrails mysql

It's amazing how community activity tends to develop its own dynamics. Over the last few weeks there has been a surge of things happening in the phoneME Advanced project - on several fronts. I thought I'd share some of this in case you missed it:

• Porting to Garnet OS / Palm OS 5.x

Several folks are really getting into the details now, discussing the possibilities and the pros and cons of porting strategies. This thread has had over 3300 views in less than four weeks.

• Porting to N800

Getting Java ME to the N800 has been a long-standing topic for the community. Lately, there has been new activity in moving this along. Check out this thread.

• Identifying and squashing bugs

Several community members have nailed bugs and even provide fixes for them. Two examples: In this thread community member Mike found a problem in the Qt-related image handling and provided a fix as well. And in this thread community member Jason found a regression that was promptly fixed by the phoneME Advanced team.

• Adding Bluetooth functionality

Bluecove is popular open source project that brings Bluetooth functionality to a number of platforms. So community members want to make it work on phoneME Advanced as well. One of our community stars, Davy Preuveneers, has spent some time investigating what it would take. See this thread for more info.

An active and vibrant community is what it is all about. Thanks, folks!

Cheers,

-- Terrence

Nick decided to walk the talk and upgraded his blog deployment platform from Mongrel to JRuby/GlassFish.

Read more details.

Yet another successful deployment of JRuby-on-Rails on GlassFish. Read other similar stories.

Technorati: rubyonrails jruby ruby glassfish stories

NetBeans 6.5 Milestone 1 is now available with a ton of new features and new support for PHP and Groovy/Grails. More....

Happy Monday everyone! I hope that you all had a good weekend. Mine was spent in beautiful Lake Tahoe and I had a lovely time. I am back in full swing with lots happening in the JavaFX world that I am excited to share with all of you soon. I was browsing around this morning looking for a bit of inspiration to blog about and I stumbled upon aTunes.org. aTunes is a full-featured audio player and organizer AND it's developed in the Java programming language. How sweet is that? aTunes supports mp3s, ogg, wma, wav, flack and mp4 files and allows users to edit tags, organize music, rip audio cds and as an added bonus it also offers radio streaming. And..what's even cooler is that it is all built on open source software. For a full list of features and benefits, go here. I will definitely be playing around with this new player this week, so look for me to review more about it soon. I love new toys that involve music. Off to check it out now. Enjoy your day!

 

 

 

 

 

I'm back from my week of vacation and am ready to pick up where I left off with the interviews I conducted at the Red Hat Summit/FUDCon last month.  After today's, I will have three left: Dennis Gilmore, Max Spevack and Chander Kant of Zmanda.

The Honourable James Zemlin

On the first day of the Summit I was able to grab my buddy Jim Zemlin, the Executive Director of the Linux Foundation for a spirited discussion about the Foundation, Linux and a bunch more. 

My interview with Jim (15:55)  Listen (Mp3) Listen (ogg)

Jimmy Z, all badged-up and ready to roll! 

Some of the topics we tackle:

• What exactly does the Linux Foundation do? 
  
• Fighting the anti-Linux FUD that comes from Microsoft and "others"
• List of events coming up that the LF is involved with like the Kernel Summit and the Plumbers Conference.
  
• Props for Sam Ramji of Microsoft
• How Marten Mickos did at the Linux Foundation summit
  
• Will Sun release more of its Free Software under the GPLv2?
• IBM and their mix of Free and proprietary Software
• What Jim plans to do at the RedHat Summit

Pau for now...

Technorati: jul4th fireworks cupertino memorialpark 2008 photography

There is a new tutorial on how to setup MySQL Cluster using Zones. Also lots of relatively new resources on how to develop MySQL solutions using NetBeans. More....

Got the following Hindi poems from a friend - deja vu.















And then the best of all ...


A consolidated collection is available here.

Technorati: hindi poems kids

For the first time in its 25 year history, Sun has a product that passes the $1Bn mark and is the featured star in a blockbuster movie. With a strong supporting cast that includes Steve Carell, of "The Office" fame, Wendy Johnson of Sun's Product Management team, and Jim Cates of Sun's Engineering team, the SL8500 has captured the interest of IT Managers and movie goers globally. See Sun's SL8500 in the movie Get Smart.

This week's Gadget-of-the-Week is a emerging as technology-rich, carbon-light, alternative energy version that is City 2.0. More...

Two new articles on scripting languages. The first discusses the mechanics in Java to interface/integrate scripting languages and Java. The second article offers a tutorial/article showing how to use JMaki, PHP, MySQL to build a web app. More...

The video and slides from last December in Belgium.

As some (many? both?) of you know, we have been running a special program for Education with Sun SPOTs. We have been accepting proposals, and granting Sun SPOT kits, for course development in Wireless Sensor Networks, Robotics, and a wide range of other topics. The courses developed through this program are required to be open source, and we're starting to get results!

RTI has submitted an interesting website with some of their course development activities and results. Check it out!

I'll post more as they roll in. If you're working on one of these projects, and you want to see your project listed here, just send me the link (again, if you already did and I ignored it) and I'll get it posted here!

[ The Kennedy Constant:

Don't get mad -- get even. ]

Exactly 1 month later (Aug 3, 2008), I'll be running the San Francisco Marathon (First Half) - the coolest marathon right in the middle of Summer. Register Now! Read the 2nd newlsetter for all the latest developments.

 Here are some of the features that make this marathon cool:

• Music Miles - Local bands, cheerleaders and motivational signs and trivia through out the course
• Best Running City in America - Voted by Runner's World
• Spectator Bus Service for friends and family to cheer up
• Run through historic landmarks - Golden Gate Bridge, Fisherman's Wharf, Presidio, Home of San Francisco Giants, Bay Bridge
• Going Green - Reducing the impact on environment

Watch the entire course of full marathon in the video footage that follows a group of runners, led by Dean Karnazes (the ultra marathon man).

Part 1 at ...

And then part 2 (starting @ mile 10) ...


This will be the 4th addition to my list of marathons:

• San Francisco 2007
• Silicon Valley 2006
• San Francisco 2005 (1/2)

I completed PG&E @ Rancho last weekend in 84 mins, 45 secs (run+walk 56 mins to the top starting from the first parking lot and downhill running) and hope to run 4 more times in as many weekends before the race.

Technorati: running marathon runsfm

Looking at various LISP environments are pushing me toward looking at a NetBeans LISP IDE extension. More....

A while ago, Jon wrote about his first World Builder world, which is a lecture hall. Since then, this has become a standard part of our Wonderland "demo tour". What's nice about the lecture hall, apart from the fact that it showcases how easy it is to build spaces using our web based World Builder application, is that it's packed with cool features that make for a really great demo.

Let's take a quick tour:

Let's start with where I'm standing.

First notice the floor mounted microphone, just in front of me and slightly to my right. This is a functional in-world microphone. It's not just a prop. If I stand on the white square by the microphone, my voice will be amplified so that everyone in the lecture hall hears me at the same volume. Having a microphone in this space provides virtual world users with a familiar real world model for addressing questions to the presenters. The microphone enforces a one-at-a-time mechanism by requiring proximity to the microphone. Of course we could have done away with this completely and given everyone the ability to address the room at full volume, but the virtual microphone allows us to use social mediation to control question asking. Why create a new mechanism when, there's already an established solution we can bring from the real world?

If you look carefully there's also a white square on the stage which works in the same way for the presenter.

On the far wall of the lecture hall are two collaborative applications.

On the left is a PDF viewer. This allows a PDF document to be displayed in-world and can be used by the presenter just like they'd use a laptop and a projector to give presentations in the the real world. Unlike the real world, though, audience members can un-sync from the presenter and flip through the slides on their own. Each user can do this independently, and when they're done, they can re-sync with the presenter to go back to the slide they're currently on. All without interrupting the presentation. Try doing that in the real world!

To the right is a video application. Presenters can use this to load videos to show during their presentation. The video application supports recorded videos in a wide range of formats courtesy of the fobs video library which provides Java bindings to native video and audio codecs. The video app can also be used to stream live video from Axis webcams, courtesy of the jipcam library.

New in Wonderland 0.4 is a heads up display (HUD). You can see the control panel for the video application in the bottom right. The button that looks like a chain is the sync button. Just like the PDF viewer, individuals can un-sync from the presenter and play the video at their own pace.

Finally, there's one more interesting component in this feature packed space. On the far left there's a table with a phone. This phone allows us to dial out from the virtual world to real world phones and have so-called "out worlders" (thanks, Jordan for coining that phrase!) join the meeting in the virtual world. This phone acts like a conference call, people can also dial into the meeting from their phones.

So, that's Wonderland's virtual lecture hall. I hope this encourages you to use the features we're building into Wonderland to create really effective collaborative spaces of your own. We'd love to hear about your projects. Better yet, invite us into your worlds for a show-and-tell. We'd love to meet you!

I don't know about you guys, but I'm getting a little tired of listening to my Neil Young albums on boring ol' iTunes.
Can I get an amen?

Enter aTunes - a full-featured music file manager, just like iTunes, but developed with Java.
(aka, it's infinitely better.)

aTunes functions on Macs, Windows, Linux, Unix-like systems, and is completely open source. Edit tags, organize your tunes, rip CD's...

Do everything you need to get your groove on, but hand-in-hand with Java and Open Source.

Hello everyone! I am heading off to Lake Tahoe for the holiday weekend later tonight, but I wanted to quickly leave you with my artist of the week. This will probably come as no surprise that I am going to feature the likes of the boys of Minibar. After being blessed with seeing them live and performing all my favorite songs last week, I figured I needed give them props once again and get all of you listening to them as soon as possible. I am actually going to feature one of Simon Petty's side projects, Solomon's Seal in this post because I think the song, "Sleeping In the Car" is gorgeous. Simon's voice can get you lost in a sea of beautiful lyrics, gorgeous vocals and musical prose. I hope you enjoy the song as much as I do and I am working on getting the boys up to San Francisco as soon as possible. Until they come to your neck and my neck of the woods again, enjoy the song and of course enjoy your day!  

 

Doing the simplest thing that could possibly work is a frequent advice of the agile development movement. But how applicable is that advice in different kinds of development contexts?

Just catching up with the morning news... Check this out: 

Sun Microsystems Tuesday said it has broken the million-messages-per-second barrier for the Thomson Reuters Market Data System, a platform widely used by Wall Street financial houses to aggregate data and complete trades.

"We've broken the 1 million messages per second barrier using off-the-shelf Intel-chip hardware and Solaris 10," says Ambreesh Khanna, CTO for Sun's financial services division. "Reuters Markets Data System is widely used to aggregate information, and algorithmic trading is one reason market data has more reason to focus on latency."

Full story.