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 Terrence Barr's Blog
Be sure to listen to "Live from JavaOne 2008" podcastPosted by terrencebarr on May 09, 2008 at 12:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)Daniel Steinberg created an excellent podcast that captures all the important demos and products on the JavaOne pavilion floor related to mobile and embedded Java. Check out "Java Mobility Podcast 45: Live from JavaOne 2008" - highly recommended. -- Terrence Nice to meet you!Posted by terrencebarr on May 09, 2008 at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
One of the really great aspects of my job as community ambassador is that I get to interact with many talented folks around the globe and get to see a lot of cool stuff people are doing in the mobile and embedded space. Often, I am involved with folks electronically over months, working on projects, pulling together information, establishing connections - so I know them quite well before ever meeting them in person. And at events like JavaOne I then finally do get a chance to meet them face to face - an opportunity which I really appreciate. Even with all the non-stop electronic communication of today's world the personal touch is as important as ever. Nothing can replace a handshake and a few minutes of one-to-one conversation to establish a relationship. Brazilians Bruno Ghisi, Lucas Torri, and Alexandre Gomes have been very active members of the Mobile & Embedded Community pretty much from the start ... and they all made it to JavaOne this year. These guys are smart, crazy, and have a couple of good tricks up their sleeve ;-) I'm looking forward to seeing the results of some of the projects they are currently working on! The picture shows us at the Thirsty Bear open source unBOF on Tuesday night. Left to right and top to bottom: Ken Gilmer (BugLabs), myself, Onno Kluyt (Sun, Senior Director of Communities and Standards), Roger Brinkley (M&E community leader), Lucas, Bruno, and Alexandre. Guys, enjoy the rest of your stay in San Francisco and see you online soon, -- Terrence LWUIT released at JavaOnePosted by terrencebarr on May 07, 2008 at 12:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)
The Lightweight UI Toolkit was officially announced to the developer community during yesterday's JavaOne mobility keynote by Jeet Kaul (video and audio archive). An early access binary release of the LWUIT library is available immediately and the full source code will be available by summer of this year. LWUIT is a project on java.net and can be found here. It features screen shots, a LWUIT demo application, the early access binary download, a LWUIT tutorial, developer guide, and the API javadocs. You can start using LWUIT right away simply by adding the library to your application. I am personally very excited about LWUIT as it offers a great new option for vastly improved rich UI development and deployment for today's mass-market devices. I have spoken to a number of developers here at JavaOne and they are all eager to try it out and see lots of potential. And once LWUIT is be available for CDC/PBP (in the near future) this finally gives the CDC platform a good option for GUI development that it has been lacking up to now. What's more, the open source model using GPLv2 + classpath exception enables wide adoption and allows developers to port and customize LWUIT to many platforms that have previously been underserved in the UI area. And finally, the forthcoming NetBeans Matisse support for LWUIT will take drag-and-drop UI creation for mobile and embedded platforms to a new level. So, please check out the LWUIT project. More information and sample code will be coming soon. -- Terrence Coming soon: Swing for mobile Java, but betterPosted by terrencebarr on April 28, 2008 at 06:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)
Updates
Welcome LWUIT (Lightweight UI Toolkit)! For years, Java ME developers have faced difficult choices when it comes to application UIs. Because of the multitude of platform and device features and differences there was really no common UI story - there is MIDP for CLDC and AWT for CDC, APIs like JSR 226 (SVG) and JSR 209 (AGUI), and finally a number of 3rd party toolkits such as J2ME Polish. Now, it is definitely possible to develop very slick user interfaces based on some of this technology - but every approach has its limitations and downsides. In particular, what ends up happening is that developers and/or toolkit suppliers end up reinventing the wheel by creating a lot of common functionality over and over again - things like component models, rendering and font engines, layout managers, animations and transition effects, etc. APIs such as JSR 226 (SVG) and 209 (AGUI) are necessary in providing this functionality going forward but, as standards go, they are slow to spread into the device base and don't help developers address a large part of today's market. Over the last two years Sun has worked on some internal projects that required rich applications UIs running on todays mid-range mass-market devices - platforms where forthcoming standards are not yet available. After investigating the options Sun decided to build a rich UI toolkit internally for that purpose. Over the last couple of months we've been showing the results to select partners and developers and the response has been extremely positive. Because we believe this toolkit is of significant value to the developer community at large Sun has decided to make it available as open source in the Java Mobile & Embedded Community to encourage use, feedback, and involvement by the community. What is it? LWUIT (the current project name - it may still change) is a library that developers simply bundle with their application. It is inspired by Swing and provides a rich, compelling, and consistent UI across a wide range of todays mass-market devices. It sits on top of MIDP 2.0 and implements a peer-less graphics and UI model in a compact package with small footprint and moderate performance requirements. Because it is simply a library that developers bundle with their application the deployment is familiar and easy and improvements to the library can be easily made available to the application by simply upgrading the library. Update: LWUIT will also be available on other platforms such as CDC/FP/PBP. This means applications written to LWUIT will run on multiple platforms easily - meaning dramatically increased portability for developers. LWUIT Key features:
What does it look like? A look at the screen shots (from left to right):
What license will be used? A key goal is broad adoption of LWUIT. We want to make it easy for developers to use and improve LWUIT and we are looking at liberal and well-known open source license choices. Details to be announced. When and where will it be available? LWUIT will be placed into the ME Application Developers Project in the Java Mobile & Embedded Community. We aim to release it very shortly - first as an early access binary and shortly thereafter as full source. More details to be announced. Update: LWUIT is a key part of Sprint's new WTK 3.3 toolchain - to be released very shortly. This means developers using the Sprint tools will have LWUIT as a preinstalled option in the toolchain, including documentation and support by Sprint. For more information see the Sprint Application Developer program news. Where can I learn more about LWUIT? LWUIT will be announced at JavaOne next week in Jeet Kaul's Mobility General session on Tuesday at 3:20 pm. Also, a technical session was added last minute to the schedule:
Finally, we will be demoing LWUIT on devices in several Sun booths such as the Java Mobile & Embedded Community booth in the Mobility Village. FAQ:
Key design goals for LWUIT were to enable rich and compelling applications on todays targets mass-market phones combined with the familiarity of existing APIs (AGUI and Swing), ease of deployment, and a liberal open source license. We felt that LWUIT was unique and compelling enough to make it available to the general developer community. We are looking forward to your feedback and involvement.
More information and details will be released at JavaOne. Be sure to attend the TS-4921 session on LWUIT and visit our booths for demos. And watch the Java Mobile & Embedded Community front page for late-breaking news. Cheers, -- Terrence My talks at JavaOne 2008Posted by terrencebarr on April 26, 2008 at 11:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Well, we're into to the final preparations for next week. Besides being present at the Java Mobile & Embedded Community booths at CommunityOne and JavaOne I'm also involved in three talks this year:
This one is a bit unusual. It is not so much a technical talk but a mix of market analysis, business models, and social behavior. It stems for a couple of discussions I had over the last few months which centered around the true underlying effects of open source and open technologies and how they affect the workings of the wireless industry. I am not claiming this to be a complete and final analysis ... more along the lines of "food for thought". And I'm going to have to deviate a bit from the abstract: I won't be diving into many actual examples and open source projects - there is just not enough time in 50 minutes. Instead I will try to extract some underlying patterns and drivers for the current shift in the wireless industry. Should be interesting. This BOF is based on a lightning talk Sean Sheedy and I did a couple of months back at our Java Mobile & Embedded Developer Days conference. The background is explained in this blog post. While there hasn't been much visible progress on the issue there have been a bunch of preparatory discussions in the background. We are now looking to present the idea to a broader audience and get feedback and find collaborators. Sean and I hope to see you on Tuesday evening.
This talk is based on the "SVG GUI Makeover" in the ME Application Developers project. This has been a very popular talk lately at various events such as Sun Tech Days. I've updated the talk and the code for JavaOne so if you are interested in building cool applications with rich UIs and graphics, scalable vector graphics, and Ajax technology you don't want to miss this session. Oh, and be sure to check out the "Your Mobile and Embedded guide to JavaOne 2008". See you next week! -- Terrence A new title - an updated focusPosted by terrencebarr on April 24, 2008 at 07:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)You may have noticed the change of my job title up in the bio of this blog. Evangelist just didn't fit my job anymore - so it was time for a change. When we started the Java Mobile & Embedded Community in November of 2006 evangelism was the order of the day. Evangelism of Java ME, of the open source code, of the Java Mobile & Embedded Community. After that initial ramp-up and the first 12 months or so things were running fairly smoothly and I think it is fair to say that the community and open source Java ME were pretty well established. Since then I've been realizing that this job has become much more multi-faceted than just evangelism and promotional activities. It has grown and expanded to engaging and interacting with the developer community, maintaining and increasing a healthy community relationship, providing technical guidance and advice, reaching out to other communities, and feeding input back into Sun and the industry. These activities and goals became the driving force behind the position and I was enjoying that much more than simply being a megaphone for open source Java ME. Plus, outside of the United States the term "Evangelist" always needed a lot of explaining ... So, there you have it. Out with the old, in with the new. Yours truly, Terrence Senior Technologist and Community Ambassador Alive and kickin': Java on Windows MobilePosted by terrencebarr on April 24, 2008 at 07:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
The phoneME Advanced project open source repository contains a Java SE 1.4.2-compatible stack running on Windows Mobile. To be precise, it is CDC 1.1.1/FP 1.1.1/PBP 1.1.2/PP 1.1.2 which is the equivalent of Java SE 1.4.2 - including AWT and Applet support. This has been available for some time now (see MR2 announcement) and is being actively developed and improved. The screen shot shows JBenchmark2 running on phoneME Advanced on Windows Mobile 5. What are people doing with it? Well, Java DB/Apache Derby runs well on phoneME Advanced and Hinkmond Wong, project lead of phoneME Advanced, spoke about it in a podcast last year. But not only can you run Java SE apps on this stack, you also have access to many of the optional Java ME JSRs, such as MIDP, PIM, SVG, and others. So you can also run many off-the-shelf Java ME apps on Windows Mobile. And, of course, because the code is open sourced under GPLv2 and fully available and buildable from the open source repository you can play with it yourself. In fact, I've been talking about just that at Sun Tech Days and other events for a while (access my presentation here). Or download the binaries and install and run them right away. And, as usual, check the phoneME forums for more information and to ask questions. I hope that clears it up. Java on Windows Mobile is alive and kickin' Cheers, -- Terrence Your Mobile and Embedded guide to JavaOne 2008Posted by terrencebarr on April 18, 2008 at 03:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Updates:
It's that time of year again ... JavaOne (and CommunityOne)! As always, there is lots of good technical content (in fact, like every year, too much to digest in just a few days) ... and, as last year, I've tried to put together a little guide to help you capture all the things going on at JavaOne and CommunityOne related to mobile and embedded Java. This year, however, I'm trying something a little different: Instead of compiling all the info in a blog I've instead created a wiki page in the Java Mobile & Embedded Community. This way, not only is the formatting and layout a bit easier to accomplish, but now you and the rest of the community can update the wiki with last-minute information, additions, and corrections (I'll try my best to keep it up-to-date but multiple pairs of eyes certainly works better). So, here is the current version of Your Mobile and Embedded Guide to JavaOne 2008 It's not complete yet and some events are being worked on as we speak. But I think this should provide you enough to get your planning started. And be sure to check it frequently for updates over the next two weeks! And finally, once you've found interesting sessions remember to reserve your seat with the JavaOne Schedule Builder. Enjoy JavaOne 2008. See you there! -- Terrence
News roundupPosted by terrencebarr on April 17, 2008 at 03:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
That's all for today's news roundup. Please stay tuned for the "Mobile and Embedded Guide to JavaOne" that I will publish within a few days - and I hope you will find it useful to plan your JavaOne visit. Cheers, -- Terrence Dalibor Topic, welcome to Sun!Posted by terrencebarr on April 14, 2008 at 06:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)Back from a 4 week hiatus (vacation, traveling, and various bouts of flu and colds) it's time to crank up the blogging again ... starting with a great bit of news: We're excited to announce that Dalibor Topic is joining Sun as Java F/OSS Ambassador. Dalibor, of course, is known for his long involvement with the open source community and Java, being an outspoken thought leader for the free software movement, a co-maintainer of the kaffe.org VM project, participating in GNU Classpath, and recently becoming a member of the OpenJDK interim governing board. He has excellent connections to organizations and companies in the industry and has worked on a number of projects bringing Java and open source to the real world. Dalibor will be joining the Mobile & Embedded and OpenJDK team so we will be peers and colleagues going forward. I am looking forward to working with him and trust that he will do great things for open source and Java, now from within Sun. More on Dalibor's blog. Welcome, Dalibor! -- Terrence Java on iPhone: "Hello world" x2Posted by terrencebarr on April 14, 2008 at 01:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Over the last few weeks there has been a lot of noise regarding whether or not Java will be on the iPhone. Well, actually, it already is - at least the VM and the basic libraries. JamVM has been running on the iPhone for a while now. And now the phoneME Advanced team has spent some cycles to port that stack as well - see Hinkmond Wong's blog. Things never get boring around here, do they ;-) -- Terrence Join me next week at OSiM San Francisco, March 11 & 12Posted by terrencebarr on March 02, 2008 at 01:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
After just returning from India a few days ago I'm off to the next conference, the Open Source in Mobile conference in San Francisco next week on Tuesday and Wednesday. Last year's conference in Barcelona, Spain was noteworthy for its high-value attendees including many CEOs, CTOs, founders, and VPs from around the industry. On the downside the admission was kind of pricey. This year OSiM is trying something new. The second day (Wednesday) is now called "Developer Stream" and is available for a pretty reasonable price of $249. On that day I will be doing a talk on "Open Source Java and its Impact upon the Mobile Industry" and I put together a brand-new presentation for that ... I hope I can share some interesting insights. I will also participate in a panel discussion by the title of "Taking Web 2.0 Technology to the Mobile Device". I will try to blog about my thoughts on this early next week before the conference. Hope to see you there. For the full agenda, see the conference home page. Cheers, -- Terrence Databases for Java ME, follow up: Check out the new ProScout sample appPosted by terrencebarr on March 02, 2008 at 05:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Over the last couple of weeks I have been working with the folks from McObject on this. And I am happy to announce that our new "Perst Lite" project is now live in the community. This section features information, references, and pointers about Perst Lite and includes a sample application called "ProScout" (with full source code) which is also featured on the front page of the ME Application Developers project. The timing is very appropriate. I just returned from the Tech Days in Hyderabad, India and there was a lot of interest from developers there in technologies and best practices that help bring enterprise data to mobile devices. And once you pull down the data via web services then local caching and persistence is an essential part of the story. Working together with partners such as McObject gives developers more immediate access to information, more options, and helps them to develop betters applications faster. Thanks! A few years ago who would have thought we'd have object-oriented persistence on mass-market phones? Clearly, Java ME is growing up. Cheers, -- Terrence Report from BarcelonaPosted by terrencebarr on February 20, 2008 at 01:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
I did a brief trip to Barcelona, Spain, last week to attend a couple of events: 1. Mobile World Congress (MWC) Considering I was only there for a little more than 48 hours that is probably a packed agenda ;-) Mobile World Congress I'm a bit torn about MWC. My distinct impression is that it is too large for it's own good. With almost 60,000 (!) attendees there were lines everywhere, the halls and walkways were crowded, and on the first day there was a multi-hour wait to pick up your badge. And it's expensive too, ranging from Euro 599 for an exhibit pass all the way to around Euro 3500 for a full conference pass. I had only an exhibit pass so I can't judge the value of the conference portion but charging that kind of money for access to exhibits is kind of ridiculous considering it's really just a PR event and advertising for the participating companies. Ouch! And on top of that I found the selection of exhibitors to be fairly indiscriminate and unfocused - I saw quite a few products and companies that were only very loosely, if at all, relevant to the mobile space. So with all those booths crammed into the halls, the crowds, and the sheer size of it was impossible to wander around to try and to get an impression of the latest developments and products - but that's what exhibits are for, right? Another letdown, as far as I can tell, was that MWC this year was lacking any significant announcements or industry news, except maybe for this head-scratcher by AOL. Overall, I think the organizers behind MWC might want to reconsider their concept. If MWC is all about meeting the rest of the industry and doing deals, fine, but then focus the event on that rather than trying to be a crowded conference and overpriced exhibition. Mobile Monday Peer Awards Next, I stopped by Mobile Monday Peer Awards which was held in a very cool venue: A gigantic tent with stylish interiors, an espresso bar, lounge, and movie theatre. I listened to a dozen or so pitches by established as well as newly funded startup companies in the mobile space, some of which I already knew and some contenders I heard of the first time. However, overall I thought the majority of the ideas were a bit weak in terms of usefulness, clarity of concept, or business models. The winners (buzzd, Funambol, kimia, and taptu) are certainly noteworthy and innovative but as a whole I came away a bit disappointed. Maybe next year the lineup will be better. Mobile Jam Session Mobile Jam Session is an event that was put together by WIP Connector's Caroline Lewko and her team. It is a developer-focused event with a unique mix of panel discussions and improv sessions to bring people in the industry together, network, and discuss and brainstorm topics and issues across the whole technology and business spectrum. Caroline and her team did a fantastic job of getting the right people together: CEOs, CTOs, VPs, business folks, and lots of developers from across the ecosystem, the conversations were excellent, and the venue was awesome (sweeping views over the city and the Mediterranean sea). Two thumbs up - especially considering the event is free and it was being held the very first time! The picture up at the top shows me (next to the whiteboard) next to Vincent Berge (CEO of Mobile Distillery) and Vodafone Betavine's Oscar Gutierrez together with a group of folks during an improv session on the topic of "Mobile operating systems and platforms". More pictures from Mobile Jam Session are here. Overall, an extremely worthwhile event. I assume there will be a Mobile Jam Session next year. If so then you won't want to miss it! Next, it's off to Hyderabad, India This year's Sun Tech Days in India will again be in Hyderabad. Last year was great ... Sun Tech Days have become the largest developer event in India with a crowd of around 15000. The enthusiasm and energy of the attendees is awesome. If you're there next week please see me. I'd love to know what you are up to! Cheers, -- Terrence  |
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May 2008
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Terrence Barr is a Senior Technologist at Sun Microsystems and Ambassador of the 
JavaOne 2008 is almost over. It was another fun and content-filled event - even if it lacked the big announcements this year. I'll be blogging about some details and interesting things I saw over the next couple of days.
Update:
Recently on the 
A couple of interesting news bits have accumulated over the last couple of days ... I'd like to quickly summarize them so they don't get lost:
Update 4/22/08:
In December of last year I 
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