JavaOne 2008; Recap JavaME

I thought I ought to sum up this year’s JavaOne conference. It has been an intense week with lots of new interesting stuff. This was the 8th time I’ve gone to JavaOne.

Some of the hot mobility topics at this JavaOne:

• Netbeans 6.1 and all new features, it look really good. This is a performance release, they have working hard to get better performance.
  
• JavaFX Mobile, well actually not so hot this year. But JavaFX was really hot this year, in July 2008 JavaFX Desktop Early Access version will be release and then later JavaFX Mobile will be released, planned for spring 2009.
• MSA 2 is the new name for MSA for CDC (JSR-249), MSA 2 will specify three different sets of API – a limited, a core, and a full set. The limited version with support for MIDP2.1 and the others MIDP 3.0. The final version of JSR-249 is expected to be published in the fourth quarter of 2008. Read more about it here and here. Read also the early draft review for MSA 2, they would like to get feedback, send your comments to: jsr-249-comments@jcp.org.
• Neil Young, Blue-ray and Playstation3, very cool what Neil Young had done in his multimedia project thanks to JavaME/CDC and Blue-ray, read more about Neil Young's project here.
• The Lightweight UI Toolkit (LWUIT) was released at JavaOne 2008. An early access binary release of the LWUIT library is available and it is planned to OpenSource by summer 2008. Read more here. The best thing with it, it works with JavaME/CLDC1.1/MIDP2.0, that's great!. They plan to add support for JavaME/CDC in the future, that's also great. There is also a LWUIT tutorial, later Netbeans support will be added (summer 2008).
  
• Java Card 3.0 specification was finished mars 2008, it is a web-server!, read more here. Netbeans have also added support for Java Card.
• MIDP 3.0 is not so far away (the specification), they plan to release the specification Q3-2008.
• Sprint Titan Platform, a next generation javaME platform (OSGI, JavaME/CDC). Sun provides the new JVM for Titan, but only for the MS Windows Mobile platform.
• Sony Ericsson’s Capuchin project, a bridge between Flash Lite and JavaME, thanks to JavaME you will be able to integrate with the Mobile phone. Read more here.
• JavaOne show devices: Livescribe Pulse (smartpen) with JavaME support and Sentilla Perk Kit, with JavaME support, I bought both!!
• NVIDIA APX 2500 DEMO AT JAVAONE: JAVA ME CDC EVERYWHERE, I think it is cool with JavaME/CDC devices!!
• Java on Windows Mobile, Sun have released a JavaME/CDC JVM for MS Windows Mobile, 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.

Conclusions:

• Overall the conference was a good one, as usual. Left it full of new energy and compelled to try out numerous new technologies. Update the address book with those new contacts and new friends.
• SonyEricsson was back at JavaOne! (3 years since last time), great for a Swedish person like me.
• JavaME/CDC1.1/FP1.1 is next generation Java that could compete very well with .Net but companies like Sony Ericsson, Sun and Motorola still talk more about JavaME/CLDC1.1/MIDP2.0. This must change very fast I believe!! Every year I think "now it is time for JavaME/CDC/FP" but it look like a long way to go!
• Sprint Titan platform will one of the first to support JavaME/CDC/FP, perhaps ready Q4 2008/Q1 2009?, but only support for MS Windows devices??
  
• I hope companies like Motorola, Nokia, Sony Ericsson soon will release JavaME/CDC1.1/FP1.1 devices, it will put some healthy pressure on the JavaME community. The funny thing now is that MS windows devices support JavaME/CDC.1.1/FP1.1 better because of the Eclispe project eRCP and the phoneME project.
• JavaFX Mobile have long way to go, this year Sun didn't want to talk about it at all.
• Android and eRCP I didn't nearly hear anything about at this JavaOne, this I think it is bad for the Java community.
• The PhoneME project is really interesting, what I am missing is a official roadmap from Sun to point out where SUN are going with phoneME Advanced and MIDP 3.0, OSGI and lot more interesting things like LWUIT.

After Javaone a good resource is the JavaOne Online Technical Sessions and Labs, there you will find:

• The static PDF versions of the technical session slides are open for viewing and download to all users
• The multimedia version, which includes the speaker's audio track and text transcription synchronized with the slide deck, is available to anyone who is a Sun Developer Network member.

See you at next JavaOne June 2-5, 2009!

Read also: JavaOne 2008 Blog Posts