• Porting to Garnet OS / Palm OS 5.x

Several folks are really getting into the details now, discussing the possibilities and the pros and cons of porting strategies. This thread has had over 3300 views in less than four weeks.

• Porting to N800

Getting Java ME to the N800 has been a long-standing topic for the community. Lately, there has been new activity in moving this along. Check out this thread.

• Identifying and squashing bugs

Several community members have nailed bugs and even provide fixes for them. Two examples: In this thread community member Mike found a problem in the Qt-related image handling and provided a fix as well. And in this thread community member Jason found a regression that was promptly fixed by the phoneME Advanced team.

• Adding Bluetooth functionality

Bluecove is popular open source project that brings Bluetooth functionality to a number of platforms. So community members want to make it work on phoneME Advanced as well. One of our community stars, Davy Preuveneers, has spent some time investigating what it would take. See this thread for more info.

Cheers,

-- Terrence

The main purpose of Governance Board of the Java Mobile & Embedded Community (quote) "is to maintain the health and communication channels within the community while supporting its goals, nourishing its growth, overseeing all the affairs of the community, and facilitating the alignment with the community's established principles and objectives."

That is why we are delighted that C. Enrique Ortiz has already accepted our offer to join the Governance Board as the Sun appointed member - he's an experienced, respected, and judicious mobility expert. So now, according to the bylaws of the community, that leaves two more seats to be filled per election by nominees from the community.

So, effective immediately we are opening the call for nominations for these two board seats. We are looking forward to get a number of good candidates from across the industry to step up to the plate and help drive Java ME and the Mobile & Embedded Community forward in the spirit of openness, participation, and innovation.

See Roger Brinkley's blog for more information.

-- Terrence

I apologize for being late with this news - after all, CES happened in January - but I just heard about the award a few weeks ago. I think it is a great endorsement of the powerful force that open innovation based on open source, open hardware, and open standards has become.

BUG is the perfect example of what happens when standards and software become open and accessible and people go off and start building stuff without having to sign NDAs, pour over license agreements, or buy expensive tools and software: Imagination and innovation takes over! What a brilliant concept ;-)

Of course, if you dig a little deeper, you'll find that the BUG architecture is based on Java and phoneME - now, it would be nice to get some mention in the award announcement ... but I guess that is just a little too geeky for a consumer electronics audience ;-)

Belated congratulations to BugLabs! (and a pat on the back for the phoneME community ...)

-- Terrence

In their latest newsletter the Wireless Industry Partnership (WIP) reports that they are coming across a very strong message reinforced by personal conversations and developer feedback: Bay area VCs won't invest where carriers are indicated as the major business or revenue model.

Think about this for a moment.

We're talking about an industry that increasingly relies on 3rd party developers to maintain a constant stream of innovative ideas and applications coupled with new and interesting business models. After all, the future of the consumer space, by all accounts, is ubiquitous access to a mesh of user-generated content - on mobile, entertainment devices, and desktop - with and without wires. (Note, by the way, that mobile is just a part of that - carriers in this scenario are no longer at the center of the universe - what does that mean for their ability to dictate terms?)

This 3rd party innovation is, to a big extent, represented by the companies funded by venture capitalists. It is the kind of stuff carriers desperately need to attract to their platforms in order to remain relevant. Yet VC's have obviously found it so painful to come to mutually acceptable business terms with carriers that they have given up and are now looking for ways to work around them. Not that the difficulty in working with carriers is anything new - this is a long-time complaint from small and mid-size developers (in particular, the use of API permissions to enforce particular business terms) - but now it is finally making headlines and the ripple effects are being felt to the very front of the food chain.

I'll chalk it up to this being yet another warning sign to the carriers that they need to come to terms with the fact that sand is shifting out from underneath them - see also my JavaOne presentation on the topic: "Flooring the Accelerator: How Open Source is Reshaping an Industry".

By the way, I'd like to stress that WIP is a great resource for wireless developers and Caroline Lewko, who is a main driver behind WIP, is doing a fantastic job in taking the pulse of the industry and is extremely well connected. I highly recommend you check them out and subscribe to their monthly newsletter (scroll to to bottom of the front page). Caroline is also present at many industry events so that is always a good chance to meet up with her and find out what WIP is all about.

Cheers,

-- Terrence

Later, Palm's software division - after being bought and sold several times - partnered with IBM to provide a downloadable Java ME stack to Palm OS 4 and 5. That stack supported CLDC/MIDP and some optional JSRs but the quality and performance was spotty and the code appeared to get little or no maintenance. As of January 12, 2008, Palm has ceased to support Java altogether - which I guess makes sense for a company which has trouble even figuring out its own OS story. Anyway, despite all of Palm's OS troubles there remains lots of interest in up-to-date Java support for that platform - primarily due to the still very popular Treo devices.

Looks like it's time to start thinking seriously about a community effort to create a Palm OS port of phoneME! So Hinkmond Wong (blog), project owner of phoneME Advanced, has issued a 'Call for volunteers'.

For someone with experience building Palm OS apps and with support of the community phoneME experts it shouldn't be very hard to get the basics running. And you'll learn a lot on the way. As an added bonus once MIDP is up you can actually develop really slick Java desktop-like applications using LWUIT.

Sounds like a fun project. Reply to the thread to sign up for it!

-- Terrence

After a bit of a break from the conference circuit I am getting on the road again for two conferences coming up over the next 14 days: Open Nordic near Oslo, Norway and Jazoon in Zurich, Switzerland.

I was invited to Open Nordic by Telenor which we have been working with in the Mobile & Embedded Community for some time now (among other things, Telenor is the owner of the iLabs Mobile Toolbox project). I am really looking forward to meeting the players in the northern European open source and mobile community. I will be talking about "The Future of Java on Mobile Phones". You can find the conference program here.

Next, it's off to Jazoon - a short trip to Zurich. This is my second appearance at Jazoon and I will be talking about the "Radical SVG GUI Makeover" but with a a new section on LWUIT. The Jazoon program is here.

Cheers,

-- Terrence

Meet our latest Java Mobile & Embedded Community Star and code contributor: Davy Preuveneers.

Davy has been involved with phoneME Advanced pretty much from the start - he supplied early patches to the code base back in 2007 to get phoneME to run on Windows CE.

Since then he has continued to be involved by signing the Sun Contributor Agreement and making important contributions to phoneME Advanced. He is currently working with Hinkmond Wong, the phoneME Advanced project owner, and several other Sun engineers on reviewing and integrating his latest patches. The code review follows the process outlined in the Community Participation Handbook and the latest code review discussions can be found on the phoneME Advanced forums.

We're delighted to have folks like Davy in our community and I hope Davy's example demonstrates that the Mobile & Embedded Community is an active and welcoming place that encourages your participation. Got an idea? A bug that bugs you? Some cool technology you want to show to the world? Please let us know!

And, of course, we love to hear your feedback. What's good, what's not, where do you need help? Post a comment or email us at the addresses on the home page.

Cheers,

-- Terrence

-- Terrence

-- Terrence

One of the really great aspects of my job as community ambassador is that I get to interact with many talented folks around the globe and get to see a lot of cool stuff people are doing in the mobile and embedded space. Often, I am involved with folks electronically over months, working on projects, pulling together information, establishing connections - so I know them quite well before ever meeting them in person. And at events like JavaOne I then finally do get a chance to meet them face to face - an opportunity which I really appreciate. Even with all the non-stop electronic communication of today's world the personal touch is as important as ever. Nothing can replace a handshake and a few minutes of one-to-one conversation to establish a relationship.

Brazilians Bruno Ghisi, Lucas Torri, and Alexandre Gomes have been very active members of the Mobile & Embedded Community pretty much from the start ... and they all made it to JavaOne this year. These guys are smart, crazy, and have a couple of good tricks up their sleeve ;-) I'm looking forward to seeing the results of some of the projects they are currently working on!

The picture shows us at the Thirsty Bear open source unBOF on Tuesday night. Left to right and top to bottom: Ken Gilmer (BugLabs), myself, Onno Kluyt (Sun, Senior Director of Communities and Standards), Roger Brinkley (M&E community leader), Lucas, Bruno, and Alexandre.

Guys, enjoy the rest of your stay in San Francisco and see you online soon,

-- Terrence

• For more information on LWUIT, also see my previous post
• Shai Almog, one of LWUIT's architects, has done some blog posts on technical details of LWUIT as well as a his experience doing a quick port of LWUIT to Google's Android. A must read if you're interested in LWUIT.

The Lightweight UI Toolkit was officially announced to the developer community during yesterday's JavaOne mobility keynote by Jeet Kaul (video and audio archive). An early access binary release of the LWUIT library is available immediately and the full source code will be available by summer of this year.

LWUIT is a project on java.net and can be found here. It features screen shots, a LWUIT demo application, the early access binary download, a LWUIT tutorial, developer guide, and the API javadocs. You can start using LWUIT right away simply by adding the library to your application.

I am personally very excited about LWUIT as it offers a great new option for vastly improved rich UI development and deployment for today's mass-market devices. I have spoken to a number of developers here at JavaOne and they are all eager to try it out and see lots of potential. And once LWUIT is be available for CDC/PBP (in the near future) this finally gives the CDC platform a good option for GUI development that it has been lacking up to now.

What's more, the open source model using GPLv2 + classpath exception enables wide adoption and allows developers to port and customize LWUIT to many platforms that have previously been underserved in the UI area. And finally, the forthcoming NetBeans Matisse support for LWUIT will take drag-and-drop UI creation for mobile and embedded platforms to a new level.

So, please check out the LWUIT project. More information and sample code will be coming soon.

-- Terrence

Updates

• 5/4: Added note on Sprint WTK 3.3 support for LWUIT
• 5/4: Added notes on LWUIT support on non-MIDP platforms

Welcome LWUIT (Lightweight UI Toolkit)!

For years, Java ME developers have faced difficult choices when it comes to application UIs. Because of the multitude of platform and device features and differences there was really no common UI story - there is MIDP for CLDC and AWT for CDC, APIs like JSR 226 (SVG) and JSR 209 (AGUI), and finally a number of 3rd party toolkits such as J2ME Polish.

Now, it is definitely possible to develop very slick user interfaces based on some of this technology - but every approach has its limitations and downsides. In particular, what ends up happening is that developers and/or toolkit suppliers end up reinventing the wheel by creating a lot of common functionality over and over again - things like component models, rendering and font engines, layout managers, animations and transition effects, etc. APIs such as JSR 226 (SVG) and 209 (AGUI) are necessary in providing this functionality going forward but, as standards go, they are slow to spread into the device base and don't help developers address a large part of today's market.

Over the last two years Sun has worked on some internal projects that required rich applications UIs running on todays mid-range mass-market devices - platforms where forthcoming standards are not yet available. After investigating the options Sun decided to build a rich UI toolkit internally for that purpose. Over the last couple of months we've been showing the results to select partners and developers and the response has been extremely positive. Because we believe this toolkit is of significant value to the developer community at large Sun has decided to make it available as open source in the Java Mobile & Embedded Community to encourage use, feedback, and involvement by the community.

What is it?

LWUIT (the current project name - it may still change) is a library that developers simply bundle with their application. It is inspired by Swing and provides a rich, compelling, and consistent UI across a wide range of todays mass-market devices. It sits on top of MIDP 2.0 and implements a peer-less graphics and UI model in a compact package with small footprint and moderate performance requirements. Because it is simply a library that developers bundle with their application the deployment is familiar and easy and improvements to the library can be easily made available to the application by simply upgrading the library.

Update: LWUIT will also be available on other platforms such as CDC/FP/PBP. This means applications written to LWUIT will run on multiple platforms easily - meaning dramatically increased portability for developers.

LWUIT Key features:

• Swing-like MVC
• Layouts
• Pluggable look-and-feel and themes
• Fonts
• Touch screen support
• Animations and transitions
• Rich widgets
• 3D integration
• Painters
• External tools support
• I18N/L10N support
• Moderate performance and footprint requirements
• Multi-platform support
• SVG (scalable vector graphics) integration (forthcoming)

What does it look like?

A look at the screen shots (from left to right):

• The LWUIT demo application home screen running on phoneME Advanced on Windows Mobile
• An example of the theme support of LWUIT - the theme has been dynamically changed. What you cannot see is that the fish in the lower right is actually animated in the background while the application progresses.
• The same, unmodified LWUIT demo application home screen running on WTK 2.5.1
• An example of a consumer-services application built with LWUIT

What license will be used?

A key goal is broad adoption of LWUIT. We want to make it easy for developers to use and improve LWUIT and we are looking at liberal and well-known open source license choices. Details to be announced.

When and where will it be available?

LWUIT will be placed into the ME Application Developers Project in the Java Mobile & Embedded Community. We aim to release it very shortly - first as an early access binary and shortly thereafter as full source. More details to be announced.

Update: LWUIT is a key part of Sprint's new WTK 3.3 toolchain - to be released very shortly. This means developers using the Sprint tools will have LWUIT as a preinstalled option in the toolchain, including documentation and support by Sprint. For more information see the Sprint Application Developer program news.

Where can I learn more about LWUIT?

LWUIT will be announced at JavaOne next week in Jeet Kaul's Mobility General session on Tuesday at 3:20 pm. Also, a technical session was added last minute to the schedule:

• Tuesday, 4:40 pm - 5:40 pm
  • TS-4921 - Lightweight UI Toolkit For The Java™ ME Platform- Making Compelling Java ME UI's Easy

Finally, we will be demoing LWUIT on devices in several Sun booths such as the Java Mobile & Embedded Community booth in the Mobility Village.

FAQ:

• Why another Java ME UI toolkit?

Key design goals for LWUIT were to enable rich and compelling applications on todays targets mass-market phones combined with the familiarity of existing APIs (AGUI and Swing), ease of deployment, and a liberal open source license. We felt that LWUIT was unique and compelling enough to make it available to the general developer community. We are looking forward to your feedback and involvement.

• Update: Is LWUIT limited to MIDP platforms?

• Does LWUIT supersede/replace/make obsolete MIDP?

• Does LWUIT supersede/replace/make obsolete JSR 226 (SVG) or JSR 209 (AGUI)?

• Does LWUIT supersede/replace/make obsolete other UI toolkits such as J2ME Polish?

• How does LWUIT relate to Sun's Java FX Mobile?

Well, we're into to the final preparations for next week. Besides being present at the Java Mobile & Embedded Community booths at CommunityOne and JavaOne I'm also involved in three talks this year:

• Tuesday, 4:40 pm - 5:40 pm: TS-5606
  • Flooring the Accelerator: How Open Source Is Reshaping an Industry

This one is a bit unusual. It is not so much a technical talk but a mix of market analysis, business models, and social behavior. It stems for a couple of discussions I had over the last few months which centered around the true underlying effects of open source and open technologies and how they affect the workings of the wireless industry.

I am not claiming this to be a complete and final analysis ... more along the lines of "food for thought". And I'm going to have to deviate a bit from the abstract: I won't be diving into many actual examples and open source projects - there is just not enough time in 50 minutes. Instead I will try to extract some underlying patterns and drivers for the current shift in the wireless industry. Should be interesting.

• Tuesday, 7:30 pm - 8:20 pm: BOF-6541
  • Strengthening Your Voice: Do We Need a Mobile Developer Alliance?

This BOF is based on a lightning talk Sean Sheedy and I did a couple of months back at our Java Mobile & Embedded Developer Days conference. The background is explained in this blog post. While there hasn't been much visible progress on the issue there have been a bunch of preparatory discussions in the background. We are now looking to present the idea to a broader audience and get feedback and find collaborators. Sean and I hope to see you on Tuesday evening.

• Wednesday, 9:30 pm - 10:30 am: TS-5733
  • Radical GUI Makeover with Ajax Mashup

This talk is based on the "SVG GUI Makeover" in the ME Application Developers project. This has been a very popular talk lately at various events such as Sun Tech Days. I've updated the talk and the code for JavaOne so if you are interested in building cool applications with rich UIs and graphics, scalable vector graphics, and Ajax technology you don't want to miss this session.

Oh, and be sure to check out the "Your Mobile and Embedded guide to JavaOne 2008".

See you next week!

-- Terrence

After that initial ramp-up and the first 12 months or so things were running fairly smoothly and I think it is fair to say that the community and open source Java ME were pretty well established. Since then I've been realizing that this job has become much more multi-faceted than just evangelism and promotional activities. It has grown and expanded to engaging and interacting with the developer community, maintaining and increasing a healthy community relationship, providing technical guidance and advice, reaching out to other communities, and feeding input back into Sun and the industry. These activities and goals became the driving force behind the position and I was enjoying that much more than simply being a megaphone for open source Java ME. Plus, outside of the United States the term "Evangelist" always needed a lot of explaining ...

So, there you have it. Out with the old, in with the new. Yours truly,

Terrence

Senior Technologist and Community Ambassador

• Here is another option for Java on Windows Mobile: Mysaifu JVM
• As was correctly pointed out I forgot to mention CrE-ME as another option for running Java on Windows CE/Mobile. My oversight. Please find more information on CrE-ME here.

Recently on the Java Champions alias some people were surprised to learn that Java has been available on WIndows Mobile for some time now. Obviously we aren't publicizing that fact enough ;-) so here we go:

The phoneME Advanced project open source repository contains a Java SE 1.4.2-compatible stack running on Windows Mobile. To be precise, 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. This has been available for some time now (see MR2 announcement) and is being actively developed and improved. The screen shot shows JBenchmark2 running on phoneME Advanced on Windows Mobile 5.

What are people doing with it? Well, Java DB/Apache Derby runs well on phoneME Advanced and Hinkmond Wong, project lead of phoneME Advanced, spoke about it in a podcast last year. But not only can you run Java SE apps on this stack, you also have access to many of the optional Java ME JSRs, such as MIDP, PIM, SVG, and others. So you can also run many off-the-shelf Java ME apps on Windows Mobile.

And, of course, because the code is open sourced under GPLv2 and fully available and buildable from the open source repository you can play with it yourself. In fact, I've been talking about just that at Sun Tech Days and other events for a while (access my presentation here). Or download the binaries and install and run them right away. And, as usual, check the phoneME forums for more information and to ask questions.

I hope that clears it up. Java on Windows Mobile is alive and kickin'

Cheers,

-- Terrence