JavaOne 2007 Day One Keynote - Ubiquitous JVMs

These are the notes which I took during the opening keynote. I'm publishing them now and will add comments as and when I get time. At the moment, it's pretty much just a transcript of what was said. Please leave comments.

John Gage
John starts by investigation why we are here. What lies ahead in the next 81 hours? First some rules: Rule 1 – don't be shy. JavaOne is mentioned in today's New York Times (“about internet connected multi function devices”) We should think about every device in the world that can be controlled by software. He has 2 devices. The first is a SavaJe phone - the OS is totally Java. It is an internet-connected multi function device. Location data, form factors small to large, In the future costs will come down and we will have ubiquitous network access. We must bring the price point down. How? Open all parts of the device. He shows the second device – “off the grid on the net.” It is a solar device. Now we have distributed power generation. These are devices, It doesn't run java yet but it will soon. What can we do when we combine power and internet-connected multi function devices?

We are going to take these in volume to where communications have never been.

Rule 2: Forget where you are from; for the next 81 hours pretend you are Brazillian (cheers and flags being waved at the front – The Brazillians are here). When you sit down in a session, turn an introduce yourself and say what you are working on. Cross fertilisations will lead to new ideas and new companies. There are hundreds of new companies waiting to come into existence. Go to the effort to exchange an idea with someone.

Last year they promised to make the conference carbon-neutral. It turned out to be more difficult than they thought (though Richard Branson offered to offset all the carbon to get us all here.) We are at a point to measure everything together; to measure all energy inputs and outputs. Sun ask for ideas on how to do this. In the next year, as we take this even more seriously John predicts we will see a carbon offset price of 10-20-30 dollars / ton (it is currently $3/ton). We need the small devices to capture this information. It is our duty to make visible the invisible - our impact on the planet. These small connected devices are the vector to connect and to do this.

[Video: Montage of the impact of * without borders – the impact of java on all of our lives - “BE OPEN”]

Rich Green
We will hear from some people and hear where we are going. Seat belts on. Tray tables up. But what is the context? When you build the picture in your head what do communities mean to people? Communication is the vehicle for building communities. There are core elements which differentiate human beings. Whoever you are, when you light the bonfire. who ever they are you look in the fire. When you walk on the beach it touches the core of your human make up. Humans don't have to communicate – they need to. The video we saw shows that. But there are boundaries which limit or mitigate this: Language, borders, culture. But those barriers are falling. Use technology as a catalyst. This is a vehicle for communication. How can we further enable the network as an unstoppable force to facilitate this core tenet of what makes us human? Mobile phones out shipped the network 20 to 1. Think about how we communicate.

Its a year since he came back to Sun. Java being OSS was announced in Nov 2006. Numbers: 6M developers, 5.5 Billion devices (2 Billion are mobile handsets) 200m million Glassfish downloads. TV's 11 M. 1.8 Billion phones. Where are we going? Java EE and Glassfish. Java on the server is stronger than ever. 7 companies are shipping it. Oracle and apache are also adhering to the EE5 spec. v3. is about to come out. Glassfish is an OSS enterprise ready application server. It it time to change the game. People are fixated on it being an enterprise transaction system. Use the fundamental server tech as a server side tech. Power communications to people.

IMS
Martin Harriman from Ericsson (VP marketing and business dev) – Ericsson are partnering with Sun. They have open sourced their telcomms multimedia technology to drive development of IMS and run it on Glassfish. It will be known as the “Sun Java System Communications application server.” It will facilitate communications (voice, SMS, etc) to mobile devices by leveraging servlets. We need your help to develop the ecosystem around our IMS technology.

[Video - My opinion: It looks like slingbox, + twitter + iPhone.]

Real Time Java
Finance, telecommunication, aviation, industrial control and more. It used to be JSR 1 – now it's real. Real time Java is out (java.lang.Thread -> javax.lang.RealtimeThread) and provides real time with conventional tools. It is running on 800 plus devices and hooks into OS's such as Solaris. Move the world into real time programming,

Annie Ewing (CIO of NASDAQ) – How they are using real time in the exchange. Started 21 years ago when SUNW listed. Their trading platform runs on Java. They pioneered electronic trading. They transact 150378 transactions per second. This is done at sub millisecond speeds. Speed is important. But you also must react to unpredicted events with certainty. What are the next steps? We working with Sun to prototyping the next gen platform to run on real time java. There is a toolkit it provides including improved memory management and thread control and also easy migration.

Java and Digital Entertainment
Blu Ray brings Java to everyone. 70% of all HD disks sold so far are Blu Ray.

Tom Holman. VP of Production Operationss at Sony Pictutres Digital authoring centre. Java will bring interactivity. It will allow online connectivity. It will allow the studios to do what they want to. Generate more money. Java is futureproof and now films will be too. You will buy Spiderman 3on BluRay DVD – the trailers will stay up to date.

Demo: POC of “Open Season” DVD menu. The butterfly is following a random path to the menu item we select. It is a graphical animation. You could't do this with the old disks. Online connectivity is the next big thing. It is only the skills you have which will hold you back. Hollywood will be looking for Java developers.

Netbeans 6
There were +92% active Netbeans users year on year. Netbeans 6 provides JRuby and Java support. There's Matisse eith Beans Binding and Swing Application Framework. There's a robust new editor. There are modular new packs for Enterprise development, C++, and mobile application development.

OSS Java
In the past we OSS'ed Java. This has today been completed. OpenJDK is done. (Not totally correct - Chet Haase said in the JavaPosse BOF that there are still come elements which cannot be opened - these are in Java2D) It is available and buildable. How best to access and program it? – Sun have added modules to Netbeans. They are also driving community development. There is an interim Governing board in place (Doug Lea, Mark Reinhold, Fabiene Nardon, Dalibor Topic and Simon Phipps) and they will be creating the constitution and holding elections. This will form the first steps for the community.

TCK – Sun are making available the stand-alone TCK to the community. This will remain compatible. The plan is to get as many people access to the TCK as possible, There will be access to the Java brand after successful TCK certification.

GPLv2 – Why? Compatibility is critically important. This helps to maximise and manitain this. Licence compatability is also important. Now Java bundles easily with core Linux distros. (e.g. Ubuntu Feisty Fawn with Netbeans) This will maximise distribution.

"We are done open sourcing java"

Open -> equal opportunity. More contribution and more innovation. Where do we take Java next? There are some things we could have done better. We have spent a lot of time listening, “We want more.” Reach humankind. This is the time to reach the rest of the planet. Some call them consumers, we like to call them “people”

Faster faster faster. We want Java to go faster. In spring we will announce a series of updates to SE 6. It will be faster to download and faster to execute. The fastest Java SE ever.

Also we want to take advantage of Java and its reach (it is everywhere). There will be a new focus on media: JavaFX. Consumer focussed family of tech. This will allow Java to be used in high impact consumer markets requiring visually rich applications. Java FX will allow you to create visually impactful experiences using java and other forthcoming languages. All will be based on standard Java SE. The first component is Java FX script; a scripting language for Rich Internet Apps. There will be roadmaps for tools designed for content professionals. “Designed for everyone else”. There will be a focus on communication which leverages Java platform itself.

JavaFX Script – James Gosling and Chris Oliver
Swing and Java 2D – Demos

All swing and Java 2D scripted. Copy of a Motorola site. Done in 3 days. It used to be hard and take a long time. Reach out to the next ring of creative individuals.

[Opinion: Looks like a FLEX app.] There is OpenGL acceleration. Image scaling etc. It is really simple and is released and out there now. This is a preview. We want feed back. Where is the tool? Coming soon. Not there yet. It is planned to build a complete line of content creation tools for design professionals. Also integrate it with all flavours of Java. Sun are trying to maKe the development experience as cohesive as possible

JavaFX runs on every Java SE platform unmodified. Everything out there will run it.

But wouldn't it be cooler if we could build a software system to reach everyone else...

JavaFX Mobile
This brings the SE environment to everyone on earth. The network in your hands. This is a demo running on a SavaJe phone. It is a complete desktop scale operating environment in your hand. Java OS. Now the entire power of Java SE is availale to everyone on earth. Open programming platform. Made available to OEM's worldwide. This is breaking apart the hardware and the software.

Nandini Ramani – demo. PDAs smart phones and feature phones. The feature phone runs Opera. It can multitask and has the rich JavaFX graphics we just saw. It can access all the Java SE code,

Marco Boerries – Senior VP of Yahoo! - yahoo go! Yahoo! want to connect to their 500 million subscribers. We don't want the internet from browsers to mobiles. Instead we want to use the internet as a backbone to deliver to mobile devices. Today running on 200 phone models is Y! Mobile search. It provides full mapping and driving directions. News (not only from Yahoo – can use any news via RSS) Weather, My Photos (Flickr) You can now use the mobile phone to capture and consume. Designed as an open system. They will open it to all developers later on the year. They will allow ME developers to plug into one search. Also runs on JavaFX mobile.

Jonathan Schwarz
Let me give an example why this is important. Consumers are making a profound impact on the enterprise. Take Google for example - you don't ask you CIO if you can use it. Businesses want to connect with people. Where do they go? They will go to the devices. Most of the internet today uses the handset as a vehicle to interact with it.

Governments like the GPL licence. The network has utility and creates value. They want the lowest friction licences.

Dr. Djibril Diallo. United Nations, New York Office of Sport for Development and Peace

Sun are announcing “Engineers Without Borders” - working with the UN to make connections between leaders. Take the software we talked about today to create economic opportunity and social opportunity for those who connect to the internet.

Scott McNeally
K-12 content available for free – Curriki.org