Airlan San Juan's Blog

June 2006 Archives

Jugging in Place

Where can you snack on free pizza, get some freebie books, mingle with other Java knuckleheads, and bone up on the latest fashion trends in Javaland - all these being just a drive away from your home? If you answered JavaOne, then you weren't paying too much attention to the question. Give yourself a wedgie and say "Jumanji".

The answer, of course, is your local JUG, which is the usual acronym for a Java User Group.

I have to admit that in all the years I've been coding in java that I've never ever thought about visiting the local JUG, and given the usual attendance at such events I bet ya most of you haven't either.

In this age of internet forums, and email lists, and webinars, it seems almost an anachronism for people to actually meet face to face with others of their kind. I interact with Java developers daily, but not one of them even knew there were such things!

I've gone to two JUGs the last month or so. In fact, I just came back from the Princeton JUG, which is headed by Yakov Fain, who seems to have a bad case of Flash Flex Fetish (I dare you to say that 3 times in rapid succession!), but seems like a nice guy anyways.

The topic was Java ME, and Sun's Jonathan Knudsen gave a cool talk to about 14 or so Javanuts about the latest APIs coming out and the new Java Wireless Toolkit 2.5, which I've always thought was a great example of the axiom "less is more" - it's simple, fast, and now brimming with tons of new demos of Java MIDP apps doing some really cool stuff with the new APIs (can you say, SVG?).

The evening ended with some of the participants gabbing away excitedly in the dark parking lot about Java ME, most clutching their copies of Java books and exuding the contented sighs of people stuffed on pizza and carbonated soda.

It was a cool way to spend the evening, and I met some other guys from the other JUG I had attended earlier, including Michael Redlich, who heads the JUG at Scotch Plains, a group that for some unknown and mysterious reason likes to hold their monthly meetings at the Scotch Plains Rescue Squad 2nd floor meeting room. Elliotte Rusty Harold, whose Java Network Programming book was one of the first books that helped me on the way up, made an appearance for that meeting. Hey, call me a newbie, but I had to stop myself from bringing that old dog-eared book for him to sign!

So, how did I find out about such wild and elusive critters as these JUGs? Well, I was so inspired by the push for CDC that I ended up creating a project for it, which I found out could be a "virtual JUG". I later discovered that there were actual live JUGs around the area, some larger ones in NY City, but some small ones here in Jersey as well! Here's the Java.net page for JUGs if you are interested in learning more about them.

All in all, the local JUGs are pretty interesting because you get to meet new people who share the same enthusiasm for Java that you do. Sure, I meet my co-workers all the darn time, but that's WORK, buddy! So, if you like free food, the possibility of free books, and entertaining and informative talks in a casual atmosphere, then perhaps you should check out whether a species of the genus JUG might be hiding nearby.

Java developers sure do like making things from scratch

You'd think that after 10 years - an entire DECADE mind you - that Java developers would have a treasure trove of pre-built components that they could use to quickly cobble together their otherwise home-brewed apps.

Alas, perhaps there are just tons of examples of this in the bigger world of Java SE and JEE, but at least in the world of small Java, trying to code some of the simplest functionalities can cause some people who are stingy about buying books to go into a real google frenzy.

Take this MIDP app that I recently started coding as a side hobby. I needed to have the thing talking to Java servlets on the server, and I figure this'll be a cinch. As a Java developer, my first impulse was to simply use some code from a book, and admittedly, the code snippets to do POSTs that I found are pretty straightforward:

 try {
         hc=(HttpConnection)Connector.open (targetUrl,Connector.READ_WRITE);		 
         hc.setRequestMethod (HttpConnection.POST);
	 hc.setRequestProperty("User-Agent", "Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.0");
	 c.setRequestProperty("Content-Language", "en-CA");
		 
         dos=hc.openDataOutputStream();
         byte [] req_body=theData.getBytes();
         int size=req_body.length;

         for (int i=0;i < size;i++) {
                dos.writeByte (req_body[i]);
         }
         
         dos.flush();
         
         // receive response
         dis=new DataInputStream(hc.openInputStream());
    
         int ch;
         while ((ch=dis.read()) !=-1) {
                 b.append((char)ch);
         }              
    } finally {    
              if (hc !=null) hc.close();
              if (dis !=null) dis.close();
              if (dos !=null) dos.close();
      }

But then I have to worry about session management (where parsing requests and response headers becomes a fulltime job) and all the other tiny details that are needed to make it into a robust functioning unit (saving multiple sessions to the RMS for example), and I got to wondering why some good soul who had done this before hadn't simply packaged the entire functionality into a nice, shiny new component that I could plug into my Midlet suite and thence say et voila!

Given such a huge library of Java ME components, even relative newbies should be able to assemble together a functioning suite in no time flat. Imagine some newcomer to the world of Java who starts up Netbeans Mobility, uses the really cool Midlet Visual Mobile designer tool to quickly create the needed MIDP forms by dragging and dropping screen commands, list items, textfields and whatnot, then imports pre-built components into the Midlet suite, again by dragging and dropping instead of going to the source.

Sound good, right? I did my googly thing but the sites I found were sorely lacking in actual meat. So, if anybody knows of any places for Java ME developers to acquire basic components such as these, please feel free to tell me, and everyone else here. If there aren't any such places, perhaps I could add it to the To-Do list of the Java ME group that was set up for just such problems?

Java powers the Web 2.01

Why is it I have the feeling this Web 2.0 is just for the cool kids, and not for bookish nerds like me who wouldn't know how to strike the pose if my life depended on it? Granted, I cut my teeth on just plain HTML, when having attributes like align and valign on table tags was the height of coding wizardry, but I'm entitled to date the prom queen too, aren't I?

Let me explain.

Take that perennial underdog - also known as Java on the Desktop. Just when Evans Data pronounces that Java Swing has become the dominant GUI toolkit in America.....just when Java desktop browser penetration has really started to go into overdrive....and just when Java desktop apps like Azureus and others start winning accolades and awards left and right, along comes this thing called AJAX to pull the rug out from under it.

You'll have to pardon my confusion, but when I was a young lad in the Philippines, AJAX meant that bar of soap you used for washing your dirty dishes.

But I digress.

One of the ideas that I've recently been absolutely fascinated with is the rise of pervasive or ubiquitous computing, which is why we started a virtual JUG here at Java.net called JavaMeCDC-Group. C'mon over and join if you like good reads, because the hidden focus of the JUG is on the use and promotion of Java as the "glue" that holds together a world that is fast becoming the computer. Sun was wrong. The network isn't the computer - the network is just the veins and nerves that tie the actual construct together and move the flow of information.

Welcome to the coming singularity.

If the Web 2.0 deals with energizing the PC experience for people, then the Web 2.01 deals with something that I think will be much greater - empowering people to become more aware of their near-environment and the world in a way that transcends the limitations of our everyday human senses. Sure, when you sit in front of your PC and call up your newsreader you are in a sense attached to the wider world out there, but just imagine a world where people are constantly aware of the world around them - a world without borders (ok, stop me before I go-Neo and start flying like superman).

But there are many problems with Java (and specifically Java ME) as that glue right now.

First of all, it takes real programming know-how to create Java ME applications. The great thing about HTML was that it allowed lazy knuckleheads like me to create cool web sites using nothing more than a text editor and some jumbled tags.

Secondly, the ability of people to take advantage of all the available Java ME application offerings out there is limited. They are commonly herded into "Shopping" sites by the operators, where the available apps are strictly controlled, or if they manage to make it out into the WAP world, they encounter strangely confusing sites which urge them to download JARS (heaven forbid!) and Java JADs (whatever for???).

Thirdly, there is currently a dearth of content available that would entice most people to take the trouble to jump into the data plan jungle offered by carriers. Not everyone out there is a bejeweled fanatic, and not everyone is enchanted by the thought of blasting critters with mini-guns on tiny LCD screens.

A rose by any other name is still a rose.

But perhaps some companies and organizations offer a way out of this conundrum. They all sport cool Web 2.0 monikers like Plusmo, and BluePulse, LiteFeed, and Widsets - but they all pretty much do the same thing, which is to enhance the experience of consumers when it comes to the smaller mobile world.

People initially download a Java ME client, usually via a link delivered to their devices using SMS. They can then use this client to seamlessly download mini-applications called "widgets" on demand, and synchronize the client with the server (which, almost like Opera Mini, has become tightly-integrated with the client app). Each lightweight widget performs a specific function, whether it be a weather widget that gives the current weather, or one that shows RSS news feeds from the BBC. More interestingly, the framework allows common people with some basic knowledge to wrap their web content into widgets and deploy them quickly using standard templates! I created one for my former Java Kecil 2x blog and deployed it onto my Nokia 9300 in about 3-4 minutes using the Widset templates.

The very new Nokia Widset in particular bears special mention because of the nice user-interface that it sports. The pic below shows how the server state (as depicted on the Mac desktop) is perfectly synchronised with the mini Java apps deployed on my Nokia 9300 smartphone.

As the browser-based Web 2.0 revolution marches on, events are taking place on a potentially grander scale in the small devices arena that are mirroring events in the PC world. But in this case, the oft-used mantra "Java Everywhere" could actually be descriptive of the platform's essential role as the glue upon which the entire framework flourishes.

You might call this the rise of the mobile widgets, but you might also think of it as the coming of the Mini Application Portals, or perhaps the Mobile Application Portals, which is abbreviated in the same way.

Either way, welcome to the Web 2.01, my friend!

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