Qusay H. Mahmoud's Blog

NetBeans Mobility

I arrived just in time for the NetBeans Mobility: What's New? session, part of the NetBeans Software Day. The session included some live demos from Ikivo, Mobile Complete, as well as a demo of Sun SPOTs.

NetBeans is an IDE has that come a long way! You have to try it to believe it. Even James Gosling is using it instead of his Emacs. NetBeans Mobility is an add-on for Java ME developers; it supports Java ME CLDC/MIDP and CDC. Since the CDC application model is not well-defined, NetBeans Mobility supports several products including SonyEricsson/UIQ, Nokia S80, RICOH, and others. Improvements in NetBeans 6.0 will include deployment on more devices (e.g. BlackBerry) and Java ME CLDC & CDC in one package.

Ikivo demonstrated their Animator, which enables quick creation of SVG content. A splash screen with a simple application was created in a matter of minutes.

Mobile Complete is the owner and operator of DeviceAnywhere.com. It is a subscription-based service that allows developers to get access to all kind of devices to test their applications instead of bringing the devices in-house for testing. It is a really cool concept. NetBeans Mobility enables you to easily deploy your applications on devices located thousands of miles away using DeviceAnywhere.com.

NetBeans can be used to develop applications for the ultra-cool Sun SPOTs (Small Programmable Object Technology) which are useful for wireless sensor networks among many other things. This is the vision of the “Internet of Things”. The demo shows how to turn a Sun SPOT into a base station (Mesh Networking) so that applications can be deployed over the air on other Sun SPOTs. What does this have to do with Java ME? Well, Sun SPOTs support the Information Module Profile (IMP 1.0) which is really MIDP without the LCDUI APIs.

In the closing session, James Gosling introduced members of the NetBeans team and others who talked about their work. Of interest is the NetBeans Magazine (available online). NetBeans.TV was introduced with a 2-minute video clip featuring NetBeans on the Road 2007 – delivering NetBeans to you – traveling to Israel to deliver NetBeans CDs to developers because houses do not have numbers so postal services don't work. :-) You can see the clip at http://www.netbeans.tv. I think the following comment from the clip is a bit political: traveled to Israel to deliver NetBeans CDs to some Palestinian developers. Q.

Comments

• Hi Qusay,
  I'm one of the guys who made the NB On The Road project, and I have to say, you've got pretty sharp radar! We really wanted to do our best to avoid politics altogether, but when the very name of a place is politicized, it becomes difficult indeed. My hope is that, nomenclature aside for the moment, the people we met and things we saw speak louder than words. Frankly, I believe they carry a stronger message and I hope you agree. The message, I think, is one of hope, perseverance, intelligence and peace. Thanks for watching us, and thanks for the comment!

  Micah Jayne

  Posted by: the_micah on May 08, 2007 at 01:56 AM

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