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Tonight We Ride

Posted by editor on August 11, 2006 at 11:21 AM EDT

How far does Java ME get you?

So, I discovered that I'm now using my mobile phone enough to move from a pre-paid plan to a regular subscription, and while I was doing so, I tacked on the data service for five dollars a month to see what I could do with it.

Mostly, of course, I've been pulling down MIDI files to assign to various callers -- my wife gets Dave Brubeck's Blue Rondo A La Turk [MIDI, 52 KB], which was the first dance at our wedding, while random and potentially hostile callers get battle music from Final Fantasy VII [MIDI, 32 KB].

But I did remember a while back when Google rolled out Google Maps as a Java ME application, Google Maps Mobile, and I got excited. "Hey! Useful Java ME application! I should go check this out!"

Well, after trying all morning, I can't say I've gotten it to work. The page identified my Motorola V300 and the jar downloaded and installed (albeit with a warning about potentially limited functionality), but it can't seem to load the terms and conditions, which might mean that it has no network access, which kind of makes the whole exercise pointless.

So, my whole enthusiasm about ME from two paragraphs ago? Back in the "good ideas gone wrong" drawer. Thanks for playing.

Curiously, it was before this whole misadventure that I posted the new java.net Poll question, which asks "Have you ever used a Java ME app that wasn't a game?" Cast your vote on the front page, and then visit the results page for results and discussion.

In Java Today, Peter Ahé's blog HotSpot and other compilers considers the relationship of HotSpot and javac-generated code: "In a comment on a previous blog entry, Damon Hart-Davis asked if HotSpot is better with classes generated by javac and if it is true that some static transformations (optimization or obfuscation) can impact the performance of your application? The short answer is that HotSpot is not targeted to javac code but some static transformation can adversely affect the performance of your application. I'll give some more details below."

The eighty-ninth issue of the JavaTools Community Newsletter is online, featuring tool news from around the web, announcements of Simple Log's version 2.0 release and the AdvanceNative2ASCIITool project's graduation from the Tools Community incubator, and a Tool Tip on adding new roles to your project.

Calvin Austin looks at Java's would-be rival in C#: Is the Party Over? "Given that C# hasn't necessarily been the instant success that many thought it would have been, it hasn't been for lack of trying. The MSDN site has adopted many of the best practices used on other developer Web sites. [...] While C# has gained some traction in those years, why didn't it make the grade?"

In today's Forums, anilp1 wants to know Can my application know the location of the jnlp file that launched it? "Or, is there some workaround that will allow relative references? I have a folder on the client desktop that contains some data files and the jnlp file. The folder is not on the webserver, though the jars were originally downloaded from there When the user clicks on it, it launches the application, and passes in the tag, the relative path of the datafile. for example, ../mydata1.txt. Passing in the relative path is good because (like html), the folder can be moved to another location or emailed, and the application still work. Does anyone know how to do this?"

leouser is thinking about the Swing Application Framework in Re: JSR 296? "That does look interesting, Im hoping that the developer isn't 'stuck' having to use the whole framework to get benefits out of it. If I write a 300 line miniprogram Id probably like to skip subclassing Application and just use some of the annotations (Of course I haven't seen how many annotations there are or what they do, but the idea seems attractive). I'm going to guess that the blocking dialog is an option to use, being able to use the wait cursor would be a good alternative."

In today's Weblogs. Arun Gupta talks up wsmonitor (Web Services Monitor): A light-weight SOAP and HTTP Traffic Monitoring tool: "This tool, wsmonitor, is a light-weight, easy to use SOAP and HTTP traffic monitoring tool. This tool uses port forwarding to capture the SOAP messages and HTTP headers between a sender and a receiver and displays them nicely formatted in a graphical user interface."

Marina Sum points to Interesting Interviews with Sun's Tim Bray and Radia Perlman: "The World Wide Web just turned 15 years old! Two articles quote Sun's Tim Bray and Radia Perlman on the Web's past and future, also P2P."

Finally, Richard Bair offers a Varargs Puzzler: "This probably isn't up to Click 'n' Clack's standards, but here's a fun little Java 5 puzzler for a Thursday afternoon."

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How far does Java ME get you?
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