Janice J. Heiss's Blog

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Innovation Happens Elsewhere

In this interview (by yours truly), Innovation Happens Elsewhere: Part Two of a Conversation With Sun Microsystems Laboratories' Ron Goldman, with Sun's Ron Goldman, he talks about working with Richard Gabriel to help groups at Sun build successful communities around such open-source projects as Jini technology, the NetBeans IDE, OpenOffice, JXTA technology, java.net, and, most recently, OpenSolaris. They've put their insights into a Jolt award-winning book, Innovation Happens Elsewhere.

I found Ron's observations interesting. Here's some in a nutshell:

* The key to successful open source projects is passionately shared goals.

* There are always more smart people outside of a company than in it. Hence, "Innovation Happens Elsewhere".

* The biggest misconception managers have is that they can cut back on the number of people in their group working on a project by making open sourcing it, because the community will pick up the slack. But in fact, it's the opposite: An open-source project takes more resources than an internal proprietary one.

* Another misconception is that open source is business as usual and doesn't require fundamental change.

* Users are often a neglected resource in open source communities. Because they often are not programmers, they may not get a vote, but who is better than the end-user at evaluating the software?

I'm wondering if these ring true to you....

Here we go! JavaOne is almost here!

Among the topics currently scheduled for my editorial beat:

-- The Slot Car Programming Challenge wherein developers get to test their skills with Real-Time Java. Standard 1/24 scale cars run around a track with 80 sensors spread along its length with a power supply controlled by an A/D converter driven from a workstation. Contestants have to write software that controls the car while going as fast as possible. The sensors are simple photocell gates like those used to detect paper moving through a printer. The Real-Time Java program senses the track position of a slot car and sets the voltage to the track -- and thus the speed of the car. Attendees with the 3 shortest lap times will have a final run-off during James Gosling’s keynote on Friday.

-- The activities of Tommy, the autonomous, unmanned Java technology-powered robotic dune buggy, who will be making myriad appearances. Tommy's software is built on a Java technology-based platform called the Mobile Autonomous X-bot (MAX) developed by Perrone Robotics, Inc. (PRI). PRI-MAX runs on the Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE, formerly known as J2SE), and uses the Java Communications API, while Tommy's microprocessors rely on a hardware-based Java Virtual Machine (JVM) running Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME, formerly known as J2ME).

-- The always-lively discussion at the Fireside Chat wherein JavaOne conference Alumni get to engage with Java luminaries.

-- Sun’s Project Tango which addresses interoperability between applications built on Microsoft's Web Services Communications Foundation (WCF, a.k.a. Indigo) and those built with Sun's Java Web Services technologies.

-- SOA and developments in open source.

-- Twelve Reasons to Use NetBeans Software.

Plus numerous other sessions, along with exhibits in the Pavilion and the flexibility to go where the action is. I already feel sleep deprived!

Meet the Engineer Q&A on java.sun.com

Please check out this Q&A:

http://java.sun.com/developer/Meet-Eng/ohair/

I did with Kelly O'Hair, senior staff
engineer in JDK (Java Development Kit) Core Serviceability.

He was really fun to interview.

Asked if he ever feels a sense that he's
created something beautiful when
he writes code, O'Hair said,
"Well, more like 'not ugly.'
There's a gray zone between ugly
and beautiful. Simple is beautiful."

Kelly is a java.net blogger so check out his blog
too to get to know him better if you haven't already.

Project Looking Glass: An Expanding Universe on Your Desktop

I'm at TS-7992 where Project Looking Glass (LG3D), a Java technology-based open source project that brings a richer user experience to the desktop through 3D windowing and visualization capabilities, is being presented to an audience of, I guesstimate, 800 people. LG3D sprang from the very creative heart and mind of Sun's Hideya Kawahara. Recognizing that desktops had not changed substantially in 20 years, he set out to make them more aesthetically appealing and powerful. Operating on the assumption that the next user interfaces would be 3D, he initiated a side project that would consume at least two hours a day of his spare time, plus most of his weekends and holidays for more than a year before taking hold at Sun. To put it mildly, it has taken hold. It's the most popular "app" on java.net (http://lg3d.dev.java.net) with 26,600 source code downloads, plus 600 members (and counting) since the 2004 JavaOne Conference where it was open sourced.

So what's the latest? Hideya and Paul Byrne, LG3D project owners, demo'ed a range of 3D images, a music player, scenes in which you could alter the backgrounds with a click, "Alice" an award winning 3D media player (http://alice.dev.java.net) that is the first to utilize the 3D capacity of Looking Glass, and more.

CosmoSchedulerD, a three-dimensional application running on LG3D software, created by developers at the Kyushu Institute of Technology in Japan, won a Duke's Choice Award (http://java.sun.com/javaone/sf/dukes_choice_awards.jsp). As a schedule book, it recreates outer space, with your personal solar system built in by arranging the planets according to their dates. The front of the orbit represents the current time, while the size of the planet symbolizes an appointment's importance, which makes it hard to forget an event even a few light years from now. CosmoSchedulerD contains features that ordinary schedule notebooks don't have, such as automatic scheduling, networking, and a workspace manager. Imaginative desktops seem to inspire even more imaginative apps to be built on them.

(I can't escape the feeling that talking about innovations on a gorgeous 3D desktop is like a donkey carrying a load of books. Have to shake it off. By all means go check out "Philco" running LG3D, the mock-up on the cell phone, and LG3D on a 3D LCD display, and all the rest on the pavilion floor!)

Hideya and Paul gave a brief summary of how to create a "deep" 3D environment. It's built on Java 3D with specialized classes that include a component model, animation system and SceneManager interaction. The LG3D 0.7 release has just arrived. There is now WebStart support (http://lg3d-webstart.dev.java.net) for running the "developers" mode of Looking Glass. It operates in application mode so LG3D can run on top of a user's existing desktop. Java 3D 1.4 now enables performance improvements like shader support. It has Open Solaris support.

In the pipeline is tool integration, a visualization library, and "SwingNode" support. There will be greater inclusion of identity and collaboration features and a more task-oriented UI.

To run it: http://lg3d-webstart.deve.java.net

To get it: http//lg3d-core.dev.java.net

To learn more about LG3D: http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/javaopensource/plg .html

http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/J2SE/Desktop/look ingglass/

A Cool MP3 Player at the SwingLabs Exhibit

I’m at Exhibit #1111, Swing/Labs JDesktop Network Components (JDNC). It’s a Sun Microsystems project that allows experimentation with extensions to existing Java Foundation Classes/Swing API components, new JFC/Swing components and various desktop related technologies like Java 2D, AWT. I’m talking now with Sun’s Roman Guy, who explains, “We experiment with a number of projects containing JDNC and Swing components, all of which sit on top of Swing and add extra features, like transparency or animation. There are data-aware components that make it very easy to find data from a database or an XML file, directly to the UI. You have almost nothing to do -- everything is done for you in the code. You just choose the source of code and – that’s it.”

The source code is available on java.net, (http://www.java.net/) as part of the LGPL license. The idea is to explore new ideas in Swing components that may one day be part of the JDK, like various filtering, highlighting and searching features. “It’s a playground for the Swing team,” explains Guy.

Next to Roman, is Sun’s Richard Bair, operating a SwingLabs desktop network component demo, who explains, “We’ve created a music player that reads the music libraries of a very popular music player and will play any MP3 file that you have in your library. The interesting thing we’ve done is show off some of the cool features in our Swing X project, especially the data binding. First, you see the finished project, a nice music player with ‘play,’ ‘previous,’ and ‘next’ buttons and a search field. We have a lot of music and custom cell renderers and so on. On Thursday, June 30, this will go public as: joplin.dev.java.net – Joplin, as in Scott Joplin, is the name of our music player. We have a list of music and a collapsible panel -- you click a button and the music screen comes down as an animated effect. As you select different songs, you notice that the title, album, and artist genre info get updated.”

The screen displays a cool album cover.

“It looks fancy for a demo, but a lot of it is stock components from the Swing X project we put to use here,” says Richard. “We have a JX image panel component, which is nothing more than a component that knows how to extract the image art from an MP3. It’s pretty simple stuff. This table is a normal JX table and a little browser that lets you walk in 3D through all of the album covers in your music library. It’s all implemented in Java 2D, very fast. Once you get your song, you can listen to it. Another screen was written in Java 2D, we call Zoomy; this panel can be retrieved from another open source project on java.net that is called ping.dev.java.net. A search field enables you to filter by artist, album, genre and song. This will be part of James Gosling’s keynote on Thursday.”

Great work! Let’s hope it finds its way into the JDK. And don’t forget Gosling’s Thursday morning keynote.

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