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JXTA at 5 Years Old

JXTA is just about to turn 5 years old. Hard to imagine. Those internet years at 7 to 1 seem to be in play, at least with my memory. A lot has happened in 5 years.

I got involved with JXTA soon after it was announces. Anything with the mark of Bill Joy had to have something smart associated with it, so I jumped in head first. I quickly started writing applications and doing small things. I learned a lot.

Soon after things started, I got a call from Sams Publishing to do a book on JXTA. It was a difficult book. Though I had some experience, we were still struggling with how to best write P2P applications. P2P is not the easiest thing in the world. The idea of publish pipes and all that was not an easy thing to wrap your mind around. The ping example in the book went on for many pages - now I can write ping in one.

One of the key advances was simply an understanding of how to write P2P applications. One of the best is just the simplistic well-known-ID or WKI for lack of something shorter. For all the indexing and advertising, there are simpler applications of WKI that make it very simple to implement many P2P applications.

The JXTA spec and platform evolved too. The original version was painfully slow. Just connecting to the network could take a couple of minutes. Now average boot and connect to a JXTA network is a couple of seconds. Transfer speeds are also way up. The C version of the platform is also doing well and had a lot of heavy rewriting. Nothing better than a little refactoring, except more refactoring.

The protocol changed slightly, making up for some of the speed. The key advances were in how the Rendezvous worked. But it seems that a lot of things sped up with little changes here and there over a few years. None of this was without a lot of dedication from the platform team.

The next bit of advancement was the addition of a Socket wrapper for JXTA. One of the tough problems with the base API was working with an API that was unfamiliar. The socket API is very familiar and it is easier for the average developer to understand what's going on. The socket also hides things like reliability a bit better. There has been a lot of churn in the design of the code under the wrapper, but those changes are completely transparent.

The business viability of JXTA also continued to improve. I have been employed by several companies that were using JXTA, including many fortune 500's. I have also worked with several startups. JXTA makes sense for a lot of applications and businesses see that quite clearly. There are still a few things that big business needs like out of the box presence, identity management, and a true P2P database. We do have presence in our commons project, but there is room to grow.

The market for P2P is still growing and JXTA is still the only viable multi-purpose solution. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of P2P out there, but mostly for file sharing and not writing business critical applications. The only alternative is Groove and that's owned by Microsoft. It also costs quite a bit. JXTA is open source and it is simple to set up your own P2P network for pennies on the dollar.

Where is the market? Where are the applications? They are in a lot of places from the military to telecom. I have consulted with a bunch of companies, plus there are many listed at jxta.org.

The latest startup I've been working with is called Kerika. They have a really cool tool that is best described as a graphical wiki. The workspace is sort of like a drawing tool mixed with the ability to add text, images, and documents but also relate them with connecting lines. The symbols can be clicked to reveal an even deeper view. Sort of like mind mapping, but this tools also adds collaboration and sharing to the mix. I think it is one of the coolest applications for P2P and it is written in 100% Java with Swing, but has its own look that is very clean and professional. They have just started their beta program, so the product is free, so check Kerika out.

Overall, it has been an amazing 5 years. JXTA is out in the real world and is doing a great job. We have a lot to grow. But that also means there is opportunities everywhere!

Quick Links

Kerika - http://www.kerika.com/
JXTA - http://www.jxta.org/
JXTA Commons Project - https://commons.jxta.org/
JXTA Company Spotlight - http://www.jxta.org/companies/companyarchive.html

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JXTA in Belgium!

JaDiMo is a very cool application that can do various things from finding an open parking space to booking a hotel room. It is written with JXTA and Java plus runs on everything from cell phones to desktops. What is really amazing is the number of business use cases they cover. They have very cleverly moved from their original goal of finding an open parking space to multiple patterns of time/space availability and reservation like hotel rooms.

I spoke with Steven Palmaers of the JaDiMo project to learn more about their application and the future of the project. So, on with the interview:

First give a quick explanation of what JaDiMo is and why it is important.

JaDiMo is a research project at the XIOS Hogeschool Limburg (http://www.xios.be), which is an institute for higher education in Belgium, comparable to a college in the US.

The project is co-financed by IWT and some commercial partner companies. IWT is the Institute for the Promotion of Innovation by Science and Technology in Flanders and was established by the Flemish government in 1991. They have a yearly budget which they use to support companies and research institutes financially. The JaDiMo project is financed by the so-called HOBU programme, which primary purpose is to research new, promising technologies. The proposed projects can have different subjects, such as medics, biology and ICT of course.

The main goal of the project is to research the use of JXTA in combination with J2ME. Most of the use cases have to do with the mobility problem. There is for example a carpooling system, a system to locate parking garages in a city and a system to locate restaurants or hotels. Most of the applications come as a web version, a desktop version and a J2ME version (both MIDlet as Personal Profile). The main purpose of the project is to provide our partners with a proof of concept of JXTA and P2P in general.

Tell us about yourself and the team.

The JaDiMo project team consists of three people: Marina Luwel, Nicky Eichmann and Steven Palmaers. Marina is the project leader, she’s also a Java teacher at the XIOS Hogeschool Limburg. Nicky and Steven work full-time on the project. Nicky and Steven graduated two years ago. Nicky holds a BS in Computer Science and Steven holds a MS in Computer Science.

How did it all get started? What made you think of the idea and use JXTA and P2P?

As we wanted to submit a HOBU project proposal, we were looking for a new, promising technology to do research in. A Belgian Sun employee pointed us towards JXTA, which was quickly becoming popular at that time (late 2002, early 2003). So the sentence “in the beginning there was JXTA” pretty much sums it all up. Once we had our technology, we had to think of possible applications. We defined several use cases, which all have something to do with the mobility problem. We also decided to use J2ME technology, as we wanted our applications to be usable on mobile phones and PDAs. After we submitted the project proposal, a jury rated the different project proposals. The JaDiMo project was one of the projects selected. January 2004 we started working on the project. All HOBU projects have a maximum duration of 24 months, so the project ends December 2005.

One thing that struck me as genius was how many of the modules are very similar like parking slots and hotel rooms. Do you look for matching patters to fit your first module or did you design your modules to fit multiple patterns?

As I stated before, in the beginning there was JXTA. We then looked at possible applications that could be developed in a P2P way. The first application we came upon was our carpooling system. This makes it possible to find a carpooling partner in real-time, without having to go through a cumbersome registration process on a website. One of our partners is an organization that organizes carpooling, lift services and home exchange services. So our first application can basically be seen as an electronic, mobile version of their system. The difference however is that our application is ad-hoc. As soon as I realize that I need to go somewhere, I take out my mobile phone or PDA and can immediately find other people travelling to the same destination.

Most other applications are also concerning mobility. For example finding a parking garage, finding a hotel or restaurant. So as it turns out, most applications can be send as “search and get” applications, which happen to be focused towards mobility. But it would be equally possible to create a self-organizing P2P dating agency. In fact it’s maybe not a bad idea to make the core functionality of our applications publicly available at the end of the project.

Another application that we developed is a bus application, that can be used by the bus companies to send delays to bus stops, track different buses (using a GPS receiver), …

On your web page, you list a lot of partners. What are you doing with them?

The project is co-financed by the Flemish government and some partners. We have one scientific partner, the Expertise Centre for Digital Media (http://www.edm.uhasselt.be) which is a research institute of the Hasselt University (http://www.uhasselt.be). The other partners are commercial companies or public organizations with up to 50 employees. In general those companies don’t have a budget to do research themselves. So in fact, we are investigating a new, promising technology, JXTA in this case, on their behalf. After the project finishes, the partners are free to use the applications that we developed. They can further adapt them to their needs and possibly commercialise them. Other partners simply see our research project as a ‘proof of technology’.
Every 3 months, we organise a user committee meeting, where we give a presentation about the recent evolutions of the project and the partners can give feedback or make suggestions. We also organized two technology days, which are in fact free courses for the partners’ employees. One was about JXTA and the other one about J2ME.

Has working with the partners helped the development and commercialization prospects for JaDiMo?

The primary purpose of our project partners, as outlined before, is to provide feedback during the user committee meetings. Our partners also have the right to further develop or adapt our applications to their own needs and possibly commercialise them.
In Hasselt (a town close to our institution) people are currently working on a wireless city implementation with all kinds of services. There have been some initiatives from one of our partners to propose some of our applications as services inside that project, but talks are still going on.

How do you describe P2P and JXTA to your clients and partners?

As we are a pure research projects, we do not have clients. Since JXTA is one of the main subjects of our project, we describe JXTA to our partners as a solid framework to develop P2P applications. We also organized a JXTA technology day, were our partners’ employees could follow a course to learn the basics of JXTA. So our partners have a good understanding of what JXTA is and what its possibilities are. Most people we talk to, and tell about P2P, almost always think of (illegal) file sharing or instant messaging when P2P comes up. We try to explain them that JXTA is much more than that.

What are you currently working on with JaDiMo?

At this time, we are fine tuning most of our applications. We are also working on some smaller applications that use JXTA. During the last weeks, we have also been working on a system for ‘event pooling’. The meaning is to reduce traffic problems around rock concerts, football stadiums, … Our system will allow people to register on a website or by mobile phone and enter their details (address, car available, …). The system will then automatically match users and send an e-mail or a text message to their mobile phones. They can then travel together to the concert or the sports event and so help reducing the traffic congestion that normally occurs. This application will be commercialized next year by one of our partners. It will probably be launched together with one of the major rock concerts in Belgium. JXTA technology only plays a small role in this application.

What are your plans for the coming years for JaDiMo?

The JaDiMo project ends December 2005, so we only have a few months left. After that, the project partners can further develop our applications to their own needs and possibly commercialise them. Unfortunately there will be no further active development on the JaDiMo applications. We will however keep an eye on the JXTA community evolutions.

Are you looking for help or certain types of partners for JaDiMo?

Currently, as the project is about to end in a few months, the primary aspect we are looking at is finishing the project up. So we are not actively looking for help.

What gets you excited about what you are doing with JXTA and P2P?

When we first looked at JXTA we didn’t really have a clue about what it was and what its possibilities were. Now, almost two years later, it’s amazing to see how many people are involved in the JXTA community and how much interesting applications are being developed. I hope that by working on our project, we can help to make JXTA more known in Belgium, and to prove that P2P is so much more than illegal file sharing. A lot of people just don’t realize that P2P can be applied in a lot of applications and domains.

Are you working on any other projects besides JaDiMo?

Currently we are not working on another project. However, when the current project ends, we are starting a new research project, again for 24 months. The (long) title of this new project is ‘OSGi as a framework for context-aware monitoring and updating software for mobile and embedded systems’. The short name will be OCoMIS. This project is in collaboration with the Expertise Centre for Digital Media, our current scientific partner. The primary purpose of the project will be to research the practical use of OSGi (release 4 specifically) combined with interactive television, mobile devices and domotics.

About the interviewer: Daniel Brookshier is seasoned Java veteran that is now a P2P/JXTA specialist. He has written several books on software and is currently working on a book about P2P patterns. He is on the board of directors for http://www.jxta.org and runs the P2P user group in Dallas.

Open Source for Capitalists, Part 1 - Free prize inside

How do you make money from open source software?

I got the idea for today's blog from my friend Larry Snyder at Recursion Software. The question sounds ancient to me for some reason. It seems like a riddle passed down through the generations, perhaps with roots in mysticism or in ancient scrolls of the Tao or Zen. I can imagine Aristotle pondering on the subject. Perhaps I can at least guide the way. It's not as hard as it seems to answer, just hard to grasp for companies focused on profit margins. Making money from open source is like one hand clapping.

I'll break this up into a bunch of blogs. Here is the tentative list of subjects.

• Free Prize Inside
• Examples are Free, Right?
• Building Bigger Mousetraps
• Donations To A Worthy Cause

• Working In The Commons

Free Prize Inside

Seth Godin, who wrote "Free Prize Inside" and other Marketing books, might say that if you are a software company, the free side is the prize. If you are thinking about the cool toy in the cereal box, you understand what Seth is thinking. As a child, I remember a horrid cereal called Ruskets. It was like a brick of cardboard that you put in milk. Invented by by someone who was a 7th Day Adventists as I recall (vegetarians before it was fashionable). It is amazing how good these wheat cardboard-like bricks tasted with milk when there is a prize inside every box. The funny thing was, this was the whole marketing campaign at the time with "Free Prize in Every Bx" emblazoned on the side.

Think crackerjacks but leave out anything that tastes good. So the only thing left that is of value is the prize. I would eat as much as I could stuff myself with. Why? To get the next box and the next free prize.

Back to crackerjacks, they still sell while Ruskets are a memory. Why? Because there is value in the taste 'and' you get a free prize. So take something good and make it better by adding something special. You could add a software game or a personal organizer or additional tools. All of these can come from open source with only sweat equity to package them up with your product.

Look for example at adding a utility. Imagine your core database product is ten thousand dollars. Since it supports JDBC, why not include a lot of free tools from the open source world. That's a good prize and can make you look good by just including a few binary releases of free stuff. People love free stuff - even if it was free to the person giving it out.

Remember, it is not always about your product, but the experience of the product. Eating Ruskets alone is awful. Eating Ruskets with a FREE toy is an enjoyable breakfast. A database is nice, but a database with a FREE management tool is better.

I am leaning toward sending along a cool game. Engineers need to play, right? You can even get creative and somehow use the product to make the game work. To top it off, you release the game into open source. Now you have an example that uses your product, you have an open source project with your company name on it, and you have that free prize in every box.

Please pass the milk! I have a lot of cereal to eat.

Do you know some cool free prizes in open source that can be included with commercial software? Let me know!

For reference, here is a nice article: What Business Can Learn From Open Source.

Project Spotlight on JEDI - They are teaching Java in the Philippines!

Sometimes you are surprised when you find someone in the world has the same passions as you. This time it is in the Philippines. One of our newest projects in the GELC is JEDI. JEDI is short for Java Education & Development Initiative. Quite a mouth full, so JEDI is a much better name. But what is JEDI all about?

The initiative is a partnership between the University of the Philippines Java Research and Development Center (UP JRDC) and Sun Microsystems in the Philippines. With the aid of the government and a slew of volunteers, teachers, and administrators, the goal of the project is to make Java a core part of the computer science curriculum in that country. The project is creating and supporting teaching materials and collecting tools for teaching Java in the Philippine university system and its high schools.

JEDI equips teachers with the knowledge, skills and resources for success. To do that, they needed to come up with a set of items, rather than just teaching materials. Here is a list of the primary things that the project provides:

• Free access to courseware and resources such as teaching slides, teacher
and student manuals, sample exercises and exams and various reference materials.
• Training on the courses themselves as well as how to teach the courses.
• Free software such as NetBeans, J2SE and various development tools and platforms that are used
for illustration and actual hands-on exercises, lab work and research work.
• Online community collaborating on JEDI through the Java.Net tools.
• Access to a JEDI Help Desk to help the teachers in using the course material.
• Participation in various JEDI events for students and faculty such as competitions, symposia and others

JEDI was launched in the Philippines on February 2005 and has already racked up some great statistics:

• 3 courses rolled-out
• 3 new courses being developed
• 29 JEDI member schools
• 63 teachers trained
• over 13,500 students to benefit
• Coordinating with 7 countries for implementation

As you can see, this is a lot more than just their project at java.net. They are in fact organizing a lot of people to create this operation. Java.net in this context is the hub where a lot of the information is manages and the community interacts. This is a truly different model than many open source projects.

The model used by JEDI is catching on. The GELC and Sun are working hard to add other projects like this in the general education area in Australia, Canada, and Korea. Also, the JEDI project is reaching out to other countries that can share the same materials and infrastructure.

There is a lot going on in this project. Take a look at it. You might want to help spread the word that there are some great resources for teaching Java.

New: 3D Math, Viet Nam eLearning, Vocabulary & Open Grade Book in Global Education & Learning Community

This week we have three great projects from three different parts of the world. Here is this week's crop of great ideas from three countries.

o nb-elearning - eLearning Portal Services for Viet Nam
o Open Gradebook - Open source gradebook for teachers
o VICS3D - Interactive Visualizer of Curves and Discrete 3D Surfaces (Portuguese Interface)
o Dictionary - Learning a vocabulary of an specified idiom

These are some great projects from language to math to helping students and teachers. Since these are new projects in our community, if you find these interesting, email the owners and volunteer to help. We are a community and lending a helping hand makes us a stronger community. Here are a few more details on each of these projects and the email addresses of the owners:

nb-elearning - eLearning Services in Viet Nam
Owner: matrixvn171284@dev.java.net

This project is used to developing Elearning services in Viet Nam. This project is just starting, but if you are Vietnamese or can help out, please join this project.

Open Grade Book - Web-Based Grade Book for Teachers
Owner:matthewdfleming@dev.java.net

The goal of this project is to create an non-intrusive open source gradebook built for teachers, but accessible by parents and students. The application uses Tapestry as its front-end, Spring and Hibernate for the back-end. Any database that Hibernate supports should work but MySQL is used for development

Dictionary - Learning a vocabulary of an specified idiom
Owner: orneliojr@dev.java.net

There is a prototype application based on Java ServerFaces technology. The application is used for learning a vocabulary of an specified idiom, like english or spanish. Although the application is a multi dictionary in many languages, the original intention is to be a usefull tool to learn vocabulary.

VICS3D - Interactive Visualizer of Curves and Discrete 3D Surfaces (Portuguese Interface)
Owner: orneliojr@dev.java.net

Another application from our members in Brazil. Drawing surfaces and curves in three dimensions is not easy but it is a key tool for students are learning Calculus, Geometry and Algebra. The objective of this project is to create a modeller of curves and surfaces with a simple interface that allows the students to draw, manipulate, and to modify curves and surfaces in the two or three-dimensional space.

The surfaces and curves would are drawn in the systems of cartesian, cylindrical and spherical coordinates. The orientation of the systems of coordinate and viewpoint can be modified in real time through controls in the visualizer. The current version already has quite a few options.

The interface is in Portuguese. but we can only hope they get a multi-language interface soon. Here is a picture of what they have so far:

Swing Set 3 - The Rotary Bazooka T-Shirt launcher

Tossing a t-shirt is not as easy as it looks. Especially if you are a software developer. That is at least what the Swing Set 3 team tells me. Looking at the flesh wounds of one of the members, it is a bit dicy (or rather the launcher bytes).

The Swing Set 3 team only garnered second place this year. I was quite surprised. The winning entry was closer to the Bluetooth of Danish Viking and King, Harald Blåtand, not the Bluetooth related to Java ME device (BTW Java ME is the new branding for J2ME). Swing Set 3 on the other hand was a marvel of electronics, old bycycle parts, and sharp pointy bits that together flung t-shirts to the back of the auditorium.

Ok, here is the team:

o Matt Quail (http://madbean.com) - The software guy and master of the GUI interface

o Brendan Humphreys (http://opencurly.com) - Aluminum expert, T-Shirt Artisan
o Conor MacNeill (http://codefeed.com) - Electrical engineer and cranker (Stopped the barrel with only a small loss of blood)
o Pete Moore - Fearless leader, tool guy (in charge of the sharp pointy bits)

Just a bunch of software guys trying to hardware, the same way they do software. That means bugs and crashes, right? But let's look at the technology now because it is quite impressive.

Features

o Long Blue Canisters - Low-range/high-volume release mechanism.

o Secondary low-volume/high-range t-shirt release boom - This one sent a t-shirt to the back of the room.
o Bike rims - Main axis of the barrel (hand cranked). Spins at a max of 250 RPM with the right pizza fed volunteer
o Separate 12 and 24 volt power busses on the main barrel - used for sensors and relays
o Infrared RPM sensor - Measures the speed

o Mac 15 inch 1.5gHz PowerBook - Command and control center

I love their visual interface. But as you can see by their photos, they really should stand a bit farther back from the imager.

Based on the speed, the software calculates the best time to release. That's the theory anyway and the hardest part.

Time for physics. A 200 gram t-shirt, spinning at 200 RPM, at a radius of 80 centimeters has an effective weight of 10 kilos. So forty kilos of t-shirt! That is a lot of shirt. The latches have to hold the 10 kilos and still be able to open in milliseconds or the trajectory will be wrong.

Now for the real problem. Inadequate code coverage unit testing in a real environment. The highly precise infrared sensor set to 850 nanometers are key to making the device wok. In fact testing in the auditorium was done to be double sure. Unfortunately these super accurate sensors were susceptible to broad spectrum source (like a reporter's camera flash). The end result was that the system did not have an accurate idea of where all the spinning bits were and let fly whenever a reporter's camera went off.

Another manifestation of Murphy's law and perhaps one to remember. If you have a very accurate measurement tool, the world will throw noise at you that looks like clean and accurate data.

Beyond the 28 hours a day that each member contributed to the effort to chuck a shirt, they also work for Cenqua. Cenqua has two tools; Clover and FishEye. Clover is a code coverage tool for Java (a great product but lousy for t-shirt launch testing). it tells you what parts of you code are not being tested by your unit tests. FishEye is a tool that provides a web based interface into your source code repository, allowing sophisticated searching, RSS feeds and much more. http://www.cenqua.com/

The build pictures are here http://flickr.com/photos/pte/tags/tshc

Open Source and the Puppet Master - Thinking Like John Gage

Imagine John Gage and a puppet at JavaOne. How could that be related to community and open source? It is an interesting thought. All you need to do is think like John Gage.

I was at the second JavaOne. I would have been at the first, but I was on an airplane flying the other direction (reading Java in a Nutshell). I had had already ported a game called Xiang Qi (A.K.A. Elephant Chess or Chinese Chess) and a shortest path algorithm (for MCI). I was impressed by Java's speed and the wonder of Goslings stack safety, garbage collections, clear errors, and the exceptions. All the things missing from C++ at the time.

But missing the first JavaOne is not that bad. Missing an opportunity to listen to John Gage, I now see as the real loss.

John Gage, is the voice of JavaOne. Scott's key note and Gosling's demo fest are the high points, but John is the thread, the motivation, and the call to arms at JavaOne. John Gage capitalizes on the value of being with other smart people. Better yet, he reminds to make the best with those around us. Without John, we are just drones going to sessions. With John Gage, we are explorers, deal makers, and dare I say it, Brazilians! **

But back to the puppets!

Bruno Souza, The community manager for the JUG community at Java.net, created a mascot for the JUG community. It is a Java Finch. Bruno, with the help of many others has created a character in 2D and 3D and even a puppet. We call it(him?) Juggy.

Juggy 1.0

You may have seen Juggy around JavaOne. He is everywhere. I am almost certain that Juggy's picture has been taken with our fellow Java developers as Duke.

Tuesday night, Juggy met John Gage. John was following the Brazilians track at JavaOne. The Brazilians are quite a story with so many developers and grand success in Healthcare using Java. To quote an audience member at Fabiane Nardon's (Duke award Winner) Birds of a Feather on Brazil's new healthcare system: "Didn't anyone tell you this is impossible to do in only four month's?" You have to follow around these people just to figure out what they are doing right.

But to the puppet. Juggy's incarnation as a puppet is impossible to ignore. John had several conversations with Juggy, as many of us have had this week. Between one of these many deep and hilarious conversations John had with Juggy, he talked about the power of puppets. Simply, puppets are our alter egos.

Throughout the history of man, the puppets do and say the things we would live to do. The puppet is the alter ego, the id set free to be honest, gregarious, suave, overtly honest, and irreverent. The puppet is who we would be if we were unbound and free. In a word, 'open'. Yes, as is community and as in open source.

John's prime example is political puppetry in France. He also included the gambit of puppets, including the shadow puppets we might find on the island of Java in Indonesia. The French puppets, known also as guignol, get a away with saying a lot of hilarious things as they parody day-to-day politics. Looking like French and world leaders they say things we might wish they would 'really' say just so that we could laugh. Sort of comic satire from an obsessed and warped doppelganger. Political humor, no matter your own politics, is funny.

John Gage is the one person in the world that I just love to hear talk. I have met him many times over the past years. Every time he seems to find the profound wisdom from a casual remark, an idea, or a situation. He sees connections and then gives us the connection for us to examine. He does this with ideas and often times with people. If you are looking for a matchmaker of ideas and people, John is the one you want.

John also has a curiosity that is unbounded. He looks beyond the surface of almost everything. As an example, on the way to the W hotel, we happened upon a city worker pulling up a manhole cover. John was right there, bending over and peering into the dark hole, looking for enlightenment from the darkness below the street's of San Francisco. He was even asking the worker for the details to the mysteries. Tonight though the worker only laughed and said, "Jimmy Hoffa."

Remember, we were talking puppets. Or was it the puppet talking? The key connection is to the power of the puppet as a device to free the personnality of the puppeteer. When the puppet asks questions, you get that same openness and willingness too. How many people would cuddle up and kiss your hand and have a polite conversation with wiggling fingers? Put a puppet on your hand and it is all possible. Like open source, we can see people open up and look at their hidden code. We can ask for their ideas, the truth, and find what we would say if we could do it right, in our own terms. The puppet is a metaphor for open source. John Gage meets serendipity once again, or at least a puppet created under a creative commons license by and for Java developers and the open source community. A puppet that is open sourced and causes people to have fun and open their hearts and minds.

Juggy, as a mascot, is our ambassador. As a puppet, he is our comic relief. Juggy is also now a blogger. He will blog here at Java.net and make us laugh. As our own guignol, Juggy will use raw wit, satire and wacky humor to make us laugh, even when we are laughing at ourselves.

Ready for proof? Here is John Gage, Juggy, and Bruno Souza.

** If you have not been to JavaOne, Brazilians are the most vocal during keynotes. And as far as I know, the fastest growing community of Java developers in the world.

New Projects in the Global Education and Learning Community

TilePile - A tile mural creation and editing program.
gbarton@dev.java.net

TilePile is an application used to aid in creating tile murals. It can be used to import images and convert them into tile murals, edit the murals, and distribute the tile setting process to a set of networked workstations.

Compression - The list of file in the DB should be compressed and named random
manickaraj@dev.java.net
To compress the list of files which are kept in the Data Base

ARS - Airline Reservation System
raj_tam@dev.java.net
Airline Reservation System

Project Graduation of Algebra project in Global Education and Learning Community

Interview with Alex Lam S.L. of project Algebra
Project Name: algebra
Summary: Developing application related to Algebra
Owner Name: Alex Lam S.L.
City: Cambridgeshire
Country: UK

Hi Alex, tell us a little about yourself. Education: 2nd year undergraduate in Natural Sciences (Physical) Profession: can't really get employed too seriously at this stage, can I? Current Employer: Hmm.... Hobbies: solving problems, in general.

What schools/universities did you attend? University of Cambridge & Girton College

Tell us a little about the project and why you started it. This is probably the project that most of you would be thinking of doing, once you have a strong passion into Mathematics / Sciences - and I do. The project does not start as straight-forward, though - I was trying to generalise the idea, such that a platform with tools ready for any programs to have a much stronger algebra manipulating power, which leaded to the born of AlgebraicMath. The development philosophy that I adopt is that after the very beginning of core implementation, several projects that would utilise the package should start developing at the same time, hence reduces total time of development all together but more importantly, served as a realistic guideline on how AlgebraicMath should grow - what features should there be / not to be. And here I am, back to the starting point - the obvious use of AlgebraicMath is, of course, to implement a software like Algebra - which is, as many would agree, a useful, intriguing, ambitious project.

What is the project's current status and plans for the future? Currently, a demo is released in order to gather opinions about what we should have to expand on the existing architecture. We are expected to push out a upgraded version in 2~3 months time (would be much faster if there aren't - guess what - exams taking place in the coming term)

What kind of help are you looking for on this project? As for help in general, spelling out your wishes with the functionality that you would like to see if a good start. The second way you could contribute though, is to build clients that have better looks and easier to be used; this can be done in any programming languages, (as the only specification is the protocol one, which is based on HTTP POST anyway) and we would be more than happy to give a hand if you ever need help with the development of it - just shout out in the forum.

Congratulations on your graduation Alex! Please let us know if the GELC can help you in the future.

If you would like your project spotlighted, please send an email to Daniel Brookshier at turbogeek(at)cluck.com

Sun's Jonathan Schwartz speaks FOSS and opens Sun's Application Server

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)
A fine quote from Johnathan's Keynote today: "There is a social utility to free software"

Johnathan's core message is that FOSS is good for business by bringing new people into relationships and creating a greater need and thus opportunity to provide infrastructure. It made sense to me. Instead of build it and they will come, this is provide them free software and they will buy your hardware and services to support it.

"There is no downside to FOSS", he also said. Hard to say. There is one to your competitor or the guy that competes against an open source project. No downside for Sun in the products like Glass Fish, JXTA, Open Office, NetBeans and others. If we saw Microsoft FOSS Office, would that be good or bad for OpenOffice?

Opening the Application Server

Open sourcing of the Sun application server was a big deal. The code is hosted at Java.net at: GlassFish) Some argue that Sun is not great at software. It is however great at supporting community creation of software. This now means a huge shift in the landscape. JBOSS was becoming a clear leader because we developers choose products we know.

How are our software product preferebes made? We know tools that we can afford to use. That's why JBOSS was popular. Download, install, and run but even better, whatever you can do with JBOSS you know you can afford to deploy it with JBOSS. So, free and I know my investment of time won't be erased by the cost of buying a $50,000 dollar app server license. Sun's application server can now play this same game.

Sun does have a second advantage. Sun has a lot of support and of course the prepackaged solution. That means when you are ready to pay for professional support, it is there.

Seems like Jonathan is pretty smart from my point of view.

I Sun a threat to JBOSS? Is JBOSS in trouble? Yes and no\, there is a lot of col and wonderful stuff in JBOSS. It was built by a group of guys with staggering intelligence. The question is that if Sun's application server is open source, how long before it has incorporated JBOSS innovations. Stay tuned.

But this is also a big win for education. Believe it or not, universities don't run on 100% open source. Like any business, a university needs reliability and support. But universities also need to build and innovate applications. Now there is no issue to a student of university employee or professor to get Sun's server and do cool things that may get ported to the university's professionally supported infrastructure. This reduces startup and supports student projects and adds future security when the application becomes mission critical.

I have trouble seeing a downside here. The only real issue is if Sun has open and closed source. If you have watched NetBeans and Forte, Forte lagged in its release cycle quite a bit. The result is when faced with free software that is up to date, they are going to select the free software. If Sun can support the open source source and shrink wrapped, they won't have an issue.

What do you think about releasing GlassFish? Is it the right thing to do? Is it Genius. I want to know what you are thinking?

Sun Ultra for 29.95 a month

Wow, get a Sun opteron for 29.95 a month with all the software tools installed and access to support. Just like cell phone with nights and weekends free.

There may be a catch. Looking at the Sun web, there is a small clarification: "When you sign up for three years of Sun support services at $29.95 per month." Not too bad considering that it still boils down to $1078.20 a month. Still not bad even though it lists for $895. Given all the support it becomes cheaper than my Apple G5 and the Apple Care package.

Hard to get the specs and it takes a phone call to buy one. So we don't know if this is for the base system. Is it worth the price? Let me know.

IENJINIA At JavaOne (with Spanish Translation)

Project IENJINIA will be at JavaOne at the Community Corner at JavaOne 's Vendor Pavilion in the Java.Net Community Corner Booth. The project leaders (who will translate this blog below into Spanish) will be talking about their project and how educators in Mexico are using it. But what is IENJINIA?

What is the first thing you think about when you imagine teaching software development? Games, right? Project IENJINIA emulates an 80's video games console. This is done for two reasons. First, most teenagers are interested in video games. The second is that the emulator is a very simple platform for exploring programming.

Writing software is an abstract and complex activity which makes it a hard to acquire skill. Students shouldn't be forced to deal on top of that with all the complexity of a modern computer system (operating system, compilers, linkers, complex "feature filled" IDEs, etc.). The IENJINIA DevKit is designed to provide a simplified computer on which the student can directly interact with the underlying (simulated) hardware using IPL (IENJINIA Programming Language).

IPL is a very simple interpreted language with dynamic typing, static scoping, automatic garbage collection and "standard" syntax (similar to C, C++ and Java).

----- Spanish Translation ----

El proyecto IENJINIA estará en el Community Corner Booth de Java.Net en JavaOne. Los líderes del projecto hablarán acerca de su proyecto y como ciertos profesores del ITAM en México lo están usando. Pero que es IENJINIA?.

Qué es la primera cosa que piensa cuando se imagina la enseñanza del desarrollo de software. Juegos correcto? El proyecto IENJINIA emula una consola de video juegos de los 80's. Esto fue hecho por dos razones. Primero, porque los juegos es algo que le interesean a los adolescentes. La segunda es que el emulador es una plataforma muy sencilla para explorar la programación.

Escribir software es una actividad abstracta y compleja que la hace una habilidad díficil de aquirir. Los estudiantes no deberían tener que lidiar con la complejidad de un sistema de cómputo moderno (sistema operativo, compiladores, linqueadores, IDE's complejos, etc). El IENJINIA DevKit está diseñado para ofrecer una computadora simplificada en la cual el estudiante puede directamente interactuar con el hardware (simulado) usando el IPL (IENJINIA Programming Language).

IPL es una lenguaje interpretado muy sencillo con manejo dinámico de tipos, "static scoping", recolección automática de basura y una sintáxis estándar (similar a la de C, C++ y Java).

Open Source Events at JavaOne & Java.net close to 150,000 members & GELC Celebrates new projects

Before I talk about the new projects in the Global Education and Learning Community(GELC) , let me talk abut JavaOne, Java.net, and FREE (as in some events include free beer) Open Source community events.

Java.Net Community Close to 150,000 Members

Could you or one of your friends be number 150,000+1 of Java.net? The Java.net community is almost 150,000 members strong and we are all volunteering our time to sign up new members so we can go over the top during the week of JavaOne (we want Scott McNealy to say our name during the keynote). No prizes, just the pleasure of belonging to a group dedicated to the success of Java through open source and community.

Sign up now if you have not already. Get your co-workers to sign up too. If you run a Java User Group, send an email to your members to sign up. Java.net is a great place and it can only be better with more smart people like you and your friends. Sign up Now. Steve Jobs gave out iPods, we give away free help, free code, free applications, and perhaps a few free physical trinkets. Sign up and think FREE.

We are also approaching 2,300 open source projects. The GELC has 291 of these projects and we are looking for more projects that can help science and education. This month we are focusing on projects to help teach math, science, and Java. Anything in education or the sciences is fair game. If you want to start up a project, start here for education or here for one of our many other communities. Can we get to 2,500 projects? Only the submissions of your great idea can get us over the top.

Open Source Events at JavaOne and Free as in, FREE BEER

The Java Open Source community has a lot of events that I will be attending and speaking at. The Open Source community will have several events at JavaOne. Info can be found at http://wiki.java.net/bin/view/Javaone/WebHome

Here are the things I'll be doing:

o I will be doing JXTA demos at the JXTA Town Hall Meeting on Sunday - FREE

o I will be doing several talks during the community leaders weekend both Saturday and Sunday. These will be on running open source projects at Java.net. (FREE, no beer, but you need to RSVP per info in the java.net wiki)

o At the Java Technology Communiteis in Action Event on Tuesday, I will be there reping JXTA and Education communities. This one is FREE, and free beer.

o I will also be doing a couple of talks in the Community Corner Theater in the JavaOne Pavilion, including a JXTA presentation (Not Free, no beer, but Pavilion passes are cheaper than a full pass)

New GELC Projects

Now to the new projects.

Collocation-Dictionary - A collocation dictionary built by English language students.
owner: danilong@dev.java.net

This is a cool project for facilitating teaching. This is the kind of projects that gets us excited in the Education community. It mixes a service with students, teachers, and an interesting idea.

This is a collocation dictionary built by English language students around the world. Teachers can register the students in their classes and assign each student a number of headwords in the collocation dictionary. Teachers can require a specific number of entries each week or grading period. It is searchable, and new collocations can be added to existing headwords.

Uyaklar - Turkish Rhymes Generator
Owner: ahmetax@dev.java.net

Turkish is getting popular in the GELC. Uyaklar project covers Turkish rhymes. Simply you specify a word in Turkish, and get the list of Turkish rhymes as word roots, and suffices.
Could this mean an explosion of pop music or a poetry renaissance in Turkey? Maybe, but it will definitely add to the number of Java applications that support the Turkish language. look in the extended part of this blog for the Turkish version of the project description.

ISIProject2005 - Simple web application using different technologies.
owner: techioub@dev.java.net

This one is a surprise. We don't know the subject, but we do know the tools. This project will create a web application using: jsp, servlet, jdbc, corba, web services and others.

Mobile - Mobile aid application for the elderly
owner: hemal@dev.java.net
Here we have an application in the J2ME space. The application will aid the elderly in their outdoor suburban dynamic environment. More details soon.

Continue Reading...

Project Spotlight SchoolClipse

Project Name: schoolclipse

Summary: School management (Eclipse rich client application)

Owner Name: Stavros S. Kounis

City: Thessaloniki

Country: Greece

Tell us a little about yourself.

I'm close to finishing Civil Engineering Dept. of Xanhti's University (Greece). I'm working as Programmer for a Civil Engineering related software company (Civiltech) and I'm a cofounder of my small company that provides internet solutions (hosting, web-design, web applications, web-apps). Schoolclipse is our first attempt to go in desktop applications market and a "playground" to investigate Eclipse for Rich Client Platform (RCP) applications.

In my free time I like to hear music, read books and search over the internet for new technologies in programming area.

Tell us a little about the project and why you started it.

This project is started as a request to give a managements solution to a friend who is the owner of a private school. During the same period I just started work with Eclipse RCP and shared my enthusiasm with one of my colleagues. So we have decide to start this project to work on eclipse RCP (giving my friend a school management solution at the same time) and determine if this platform can give us the things we need to go to the desktop application market.

What is the project's current status and plans for the future?

A working instance is currently installed in my friends private school but we will be able to release a beta version in couple of months.

Generally the project is experimental and the area we need to develop and test is Eclipse RCP.

If you want to be informed about project's progress "stay in contact" with my blog at tools.osmosis.gr/blog

What kind of help are you looking for on this project?

It will be great if we get some help in CVS management and organizing. Another issue is more architectural. We would like to discuss the ideas more experienced people, especially the architectural design of database management application.

New book "Java Generics and Collections" added to GELC for pre-publication help

Phil Wadler and Maurice Naftalin are writing a book titled "Java Generics and Collections", to be published by O'Reilly Media, Inc. Their project in the Global Education and Learning Community (GELC) at https://java-generics-book.dev.java.net/ is for the book's technical review. They are posting draft chapters for download and comment by members that join the project. The book is being published by our friends at O'Reilly who make blogging at java.net possible.

This is a great way to use java.net and the GELC which supports learning in all its forms. If you are an author and working on a book, we would love to have you work on the material here.

Students to win prizes and fame today in Amsterdam for writing J2ME applications for Ricoh

The winners of the Ricoh & the Sun Java[tm] Platform Powered by U contest will announced June 3rd.

The contest, sponsored by Sun and Ricoh, included students from universities in Belgium, Germany, Italy and Spain. The challenge was for the students to develop innovative Java™ technology based applications that will run embedded on Ricoh Aficio™ laser printers and multifunctional products (MFPs).

The contestants built their code with the help of the Global Education and Learning Community (GELC) at java.net. The contest host project https://ricoh.dev.java.net/ was used to link thGELCe students with Sun, Ricoh, and noted J2ME experts like Shawn Fitzgerald (author of Making IT Work: SMS for MIDP2.0) and Eric Giguère (author of Mobile Information Device Profile for J2ME).

Here at the GELC, we are quite happy with this contest. More than a hundred students signed up and many used java.net to do their projects. I was extremely happy to see so many use the contest forum to work with our guests and Ricoh/Sun support people.

Since I was one of the judges, I got to see many of the contestants results. Simply I am impressed. Some put a lot of work into their applications. Given that we are talking about printer/cpoier/scanner it is amazing the creativity that was applied. That's why we like student contests because they really get students to apply themselves to an interesting problem.

Another great reason for this contest is that the forum is still up and populated by the students. The code for the applications will also be available here at java.net.
Here are the details for the final judging and award ceremony:

Ricoh & the Sun Java[tm] Platform Powered by U!
Tune in to the live award ceremony of Ricoh & Sun European University Contest being held in Amsterdam on June 3rd, 2005. Students from universities in Belgium, Germany, Italy and Spain present their winning application developed for use with Ricoh hardware and compete for the European title! The presentations will be displayed via iCast.

Event Times (Amsterdam)


09:00-09:15 Welcome coffee 
09:15-09:45 Introduction Rene Brunt 
09:45-09:55 Welcome speech Sonny Mori 
09:55-10:15 Speech from Sun Todd Korth 
10:15-10:30 Introduction Jury/Rene Brunt 
10:30-11:05 1st Contestant 
11:05-11:20 Coffee break 
11:20-12:00 2nd Contestant 
12:00-13:00 Lunch 
13:05-13:45 3rd Contestant 
13:45-14:00 Coffee Break 
14:00-14:40 4th Contestant 
14:40-16:00 Jury Deliberation 
16:00-16:30 Award Ceremony

Want to have your brain explode? Meet Me at JavaOne

Meeting people is always interesting (frightening sometimes, but interesting). Meeting people that you know from the internet is very interesting. I can not remember meeting one person that seemed like they did on the internet. The real-time experience enhances what you know and it is usually a little disorienting (ok, you will not really explode). But then there is a whole other class of meeting people: Meeting someone that wants to meet "you". I am one of those kind of people that wants to meet as many quality people as I can at JavaOne.

Why? First, the more people you know, the more you know about the world. Knowledge is how the world works. Most of you I have no idea that you exist or what you do. Are you doing something interesting I could use in my job? Are you doing something cool I could write about? Will you make me think, or just laugh out-loud? You never know, so you meet as many people as you can. If we are in line, I am going to talk to you. If I am at the Community Corner booth at JavaOne I am going to do my damnedest to strike up a conversation if you are walking by. I'll also be at the community leaders weekend and Java Technology Communities in Action, and the JXTA Town Hall, plus many other events.

Look for me and introduce yourself. Give me your business card and let me know what you do and what your passions are. Maybe I know someone you should know (perhaps it's me). Maybe we have something in common. You never know.

It is said that if there are no lucky people, only people open to opportunity. If you find a twenty dollar bill on the ground, it is not that you and the twenty are in the right place, but that you were open enough to see that bill on the ground when others have blissfully walked by. People are the same way. You never know if the next person is going to make your day, year, or life better. The best solution is to say hello.

What am I interested in? Writing (blogs and books), Java, JXTA, Java.net, and of course the Global Education and Learning Community (GELC) which means all things educational or experimental. I also juggle so I am looking for few fellow tossers too. There is much more and I'll be sure to be interested in hearing from you. Look me up at JavaOne!

Daniel Brookshier
java.net Global Education and Learning Community
JXTA.org

Say hello and keep your head!

Peer Presence in JXTA

First, I apologize for my long absence from blogging at java.net. I have a busy job as Chief Architect at No Magic. I do talks at conventions, training, run development in three countries (Lithuania, Thailand, and the US), and sing and dance for customers. Kind of hard to get time to blog on my passions of P2P and Java. So without further ado, no more excuses.

Lots of people assume you can just ask for who is online. Not going to work, unfortunatly.The problem is that the request is done through the protocol rather than a DB call which is what you would expect.
In the current implementation the RDV has an in-memory knolledge of the peers and their information. As each new peer arives, its info is added to the list plus broadcast to all connected peers. The new peer gets a copy of the list so that it knows about everyone currently on line.

In my new version, the data passed around will be minimal with just the peer ID, an email, and a last update date. The brunt of the data will be stored in an advertisement indexed by the peer ID. If the last update is newer than the local advert, the peer fetches the advert by specifying the peer ID and using the peer ID as the index (confused yet?). This works because the advert is matched via a primary key. If you just asked for adverts of a particular type, you only get the first few advertisements.

Now, if the peer is coming online and it has never done so before, it gets a list of peers online. It iterates through this list, asking for an advert of each peer. It only asks for the advertisement, but does not specify that only that peer be searched. So, what happens is that the nearest peer that has that advertisement will reply. The peer then checks the date of the last update and the date in the advertisement. If the date is older, it then re requests an advertisement from the peer+peerID so that it gets the most up to date copy. The upshot of this is that the info about the peer gets replicated so that no one peer is inundated with info plus each peer caches its view so that requests are limited to peers that have just changed their resume'.

Why not store all this on a RDV? The problem with that is it turns the RDV into a server. It loads it down with cpu, bandwidth, and memory reduction. It also causes it to be a greater point of failure. The less information stored on a RDV, the better.

Now for the magic of the presence system. I had said we don't want the RDV to serve. Well, it has to do a little, but only to peers connected. The data is also transient. As a peer connects it adds data. As it disconnects, it removes data. But if the RDV fails or is taken offline, peers will reconnect to a new RDV and add their info to the new RDV. So this is in fact fault tolerant.

Now for my next trick. Peers need to belong to peer groups. These help to do three things. First is just the address space, second is the ability to accept messages between peers only in the peer group, and finally to only use resources within the peer group. The final bit is of most concern to us. Since the core of peer presence is run from the RDV, only the peers in the peer group will get messages and be able to see data about fellow peers. This helps scale the system plus if we are doing this the most efficient way, a couple of peers within each group are volunteered as RDV which means no single computer does the duty for all peers.

New projects in the Global Education and Learning Community for April 5th, 2005

We have another crop of new projects. This week we have learning with orangutans, a study group using Java, the implementation of a belief-system algorithm, and a system for managing a volunteer organization. Take a look at these great projects and lend a hand to help them start.

Orangutan
A game for learning using
https://orangutan.dev.java.net/
Owner: kauzet@dev.java.net

A game for learning by helping orangutan survive in the Bornean forest.
An interactive game for children 3-12 years old. they can learn how Bornean orangutan can survive in the natural Bornean forest.

fuja
https://fuja.dev.java.net/
Projects, articles and sample code produced by a Brazilian study group
Owner: dwildt@dev.java.net

FUJA (FACENSA Usuários de Java) is a Java study group that works inside FACENSA (www.facensa.com.br) College. These students get together and produce Java code, articles and proofs of concept in many Java Technologies, like WebServices (Axis), Mobility (J2ME), Enterprise Apps (EJB), Web Standards (Struts, JavaServerFaces, Servlets, JSTL, JSP), IDEs (Eclipse, NetBeans), Persistence (Hibernate, Torque, POJOs), XML and other technologies.

Dempster-Schaffer - Dempster-Schaffer algorithm - Measuring belief and plausibility to make a decision based on multiple inputs.

https://dempster-schaffer.dev.java.net/

Owner: soticia@dev.java.net
Development of the Dempster-Schaffer algorithm in Java. To learn more, see: http://www.eng.man.ac.uk/mech/merg/Research/datafusion.org.uk/techniques/dempster.html which has information about this algorithm. Here is what that web site has to say about the algorithm: “Dempster-Shaffer theory allows us to allocate probability-like weights to a set of events in a way that allows statements of ignorance about likelihood of some of the events. From the allocation of weights we get two numbers; the degree to which an event is supported by the evidence (Belief), and the degree to which there is a lack of evidence to the contrary (Plausibility). These two numbers are the basis on which any belief-based decision is made.”

DonorManagementSystem

https://DonorManagementSystem.dev.java.net/

A system for managing people and resources for volunteer Organizations.
Owner: smartware@dev.java.net

This is a system that will Enterprise Java Beans used to manage donors and sponsor in Volunteer organizations. The system will be able to track down the donors, sort them into groups, generates their history, produce donor certificates. The system will also map volunteers with their favorite chores. The system will have a simple management display to help in decision-making.

New Projects in the GELC

Four new projects in the GELC to challenge your thinking. This week we have some high performance computing, a computer algebra system, a resource for Brazilians, and a venture into the hospitality arena to create a room rental system. Take a look at the projects, listed below, and join them if you are interested. If they get you thinking about something different, please propose your own project for the GELC. We are looking for education and research projects plus projects to be used by teachers and students to learn almost any subject.

lionra
owner: sprhodes@dev.java.net

The project is aimed at developing a library and framework for implementing Distributed Threads in Java. Lionra Threads, is the implementation part of a research project being conducted as part of a class at Wake Technical Community College's program in High Performance Computing. There is a little bit of code written, but it's barely more (right now) than some example code from a basic book on RMI, and an Ant build script. There is also a blog where Phillip Rhodes the talks about this project quite a bit (along with a lot of other cruft, of course), and a website with some links to related material. To learn more about this project, there is an abstract from the first draft of the research paper that goes along with the project.

cas
owner: afishionado@dev.java.net

CAS computer algebra system - prototype of a Hartmath-based (http://hartmath.sf.net) computer algebra system

javabr
owner: jpriori@dev.java.net

A java web source for Brazilians programmers.

JRoom
owner: lordbit@dev.java.net

The purpose of this project is to study Java technologies and develop a project with room rental service for companies.

zemberek - Turkish NLP library and Turkish Spell Checking

Zemberek is one of the very interesting projects oriented around the Turkish language and subjects like Natural Language Processing and even spell checking for Turkish. This open source project is something we really like seeing here within the Global Education and Learning Community (GELC) because of its international base. I talked to the owners about themselves and their project.

Tell us about yourself

Ahmet Akin: I am an Electronics and Communications engineer. I worked in very different areas, in brief and historical order: Modem manufacturing and test (boring), Embedded system design with microcontrollers and early Smart cards, CAD software development in C++, Technology Newspaper editor, Long time embedded hardware and software development with C, Cryptology, web based design with php :) and at last, my long time dream, Java development. My current emplyer is Softek Inc ( www.softekpr.com ), I work as a researcher there. I do like java programming, photograpy, chess and table tennis. The other owner of the project is my twin brother, he graduated from the same university but Computer Engineering department. We worked in the same place for almost 5 years, but his job is mostly software related. He is currently working in National Research Institute of Electronics and Cryptology. I graduated from Yildiz Technical University Electronics and Communication Engineering in Turkey. I finished my master degree in the same university Communications department. I always had a weak point on software, so I started my doctoral study in Istanbul Technical University Computer Engineering with the purpose of working on Natural Language Processing subject.

Co-Owner: Mehmet Dundar Akin, has a BS degree from Yildiz Technical University and MS degree from Istanbul Technical University in computer Engineering. Currently he is working as senior researcher for National Research Institute of Electronics and Cryptography in Turkey.

What local Java user group are you associated with if any?

I moved to Puerto Rico one and a half year ago, and sadly Java is not so popular here in business environment (MS - Visual Basic Island). But I consider myself lucky because I use Java at work, I met Java programmers and my supervisor is a real Java guru (Victor Salaman) and I have learnt a lot from him. I still consider myself as a Java apprentice (my code says the same :)

Why did you start this project and what is it about?

Well, almost five years ago, I was interested in Mozilla project and I thought it would be cool to implement a real time spell checker for Turkish Language in it. Then I started to think how would it be and noticed that making a spell checker for Turkish is extremely hard. The deeper I go into the subject the more interested in Natural Language Processing subject I became. I started a C++ project for the spell checker, and my first prototype miraculously worked. After 3 years and several changes in my life, with the help of my brother (who is a good Computer Engneer with very good Java knowledge) I decided to make the project alive again. But this time, we made a decision and rewrite the whole project in Java. It was a real breeze after C++. Seriously the difference in ease of development and deployment is huge, without sacrificing performance.

We started a project in Java.net with the name of Tspell (the original name of the C++ project too). Our scope was broader, we wanted to make a base for all kind of Turkish related computing and NLP problems. After almost one year, project was able to make Turkish spell checking, morphological extraction of the root and affixes of words, word suggestion for wrong word, and deasciifying texts written without using Turkish specific characters. Then we changed the project name to Zemberek (Means main spring of clock) because "TSpell" was not Turkish and users did not like that. Now we also provide the first open source Turkish Spell checker for Open Office project and it works successfuly.

Zemberek is the only open source project in its area and we are proud of it. It bacame a part of the first product of a Turkish national Linux Project: Pardus (http://www.uludag.org.tr/ ). We will also made a presentation in a very important event, the Open Source Days in Istanbul BilgI University about the project. (http://open.bilgi.edu.tr/freedays/program.php?lang=en )

What is the status and further plans for this project?

Although I still see the project in its infancy, project is very active and it is almost usable for real life applications, Open Office plug-in is the proof of it. We also start developing a server project based on the core library. Server will hopefully provide language related services to other applications, such as Mozilla and KDE. However, for us, there are a lot of work to do. Honestly right now Zemberek is still not doing serious "NLP" jobs. I can say it has a relatively simple structure and parsing mechanism is not really difficult. But after stabilizing the spell checker we will hopefully move on to more complicated and intresting subjects. Such as creating an open source wordnet for Turkish, sentence analysis, grammar checking, statistical analysis, maybe voice applications (TTS, Recognition, with the help of Free TTS and Sphynx4 libraries), translation, SQL with natural language, Shell commands with natural language, etc. Subjects in NLP are endless and when it is about Turkish there are very limited work available ( we know that in several universities in Turkey, there are advanced work available on the subject, but there are not many implemetation is available, especially in Java)

What kind of help are you looking for?

Of course, like all the other projects we are looking for developers. Currently only two people are actively developing and it is really not enough. Unfortunately we cannot receive much help from international Java developers because of the nature of the project. So we are hoping that more help will come from Turkish Java developers. Knowledge related information is also crucial and project other members are helping. Also we need linguists, experts in Turkish language and general Language subject. NLP expertise is another .Turkish Linux communities helped a alot when we introduced Open Office plug in.

Where are you located?

Amet lives in Puerto Rico in the rural area near the city of Canovanas. Mehmet Dundar Akin lives in Turkey.

This is for us to do a better job: What do you think about the GELC and the java.net community, any suggestions?

The GELC and java.net is great. I mean I really wish java.net would have started earlier. The services are improved nice and the projects in GELC are interesting. I know some NLP projects exist but since our main interest is Turkish I couldnt examine them in detail. Suggestions, you should make yourselves more visible in educational environment. In schools MS is trying hard to lure the students, I think java.net, and Sun in general should be doing this, because java's potential is much better. Also maybe contest like events can be created.

Project profile: Liber - Projects for Electronic Documents, human interface, and information retrieval.

Liber is a research laboratory at Pernambuco's Federal University developing projects focusing on Electronic Document Management Systems, Human-Machine Interface, Information Retrieval, and Data Integration. Liber has four major projects: Macunayna: a multimidia EDMS, The Pernambuco's Annals: a textual database created using PostgreSQL and Jakarta Lucene; Theses: compilations from theses and dissertations (like NDLTD) made at Pernambuco's Federal University and Sonora to deals with sound files.

I asked Marcos Silva Pereira about these projects and himself.

Tell us about yourself.

My name is Marcos Silva Pereira , 25 years old, and I am coursing Computer Science in Computer Science Center at Pernambuco's Federal University. Nowadays, I have involved with Liber, a research laboratory that do academic research about Data Integration, Digital Libraries, Metadados and others.

Also, I am one of the JavaFree's administrator, a brazilian virtual JUG. I am a Open Source enthusiast and have involve with OpenNuke, a Nuke based upon PHPNuke completely written in Java. My hobbies are, cinema, music, photography, books, beach, and cartoons.

My projects in Java.net:

liber.dev.java.net

pereira-costa.dev.java.net
opennuke.dev.java.net
javafree.dev.java.net

Liber is a research laboratory at Pernambuco's Federal University developing projects about EDMS (Electronic Document Management System), Human-Machine Interface, Information Retrieve and Data Integration. Liber have four major projects: Macunayna: a multimidia EDMS, The Pernambuco's Annals: a textual database created using PostgreSQL and Jakarta Lucene; Theses: compilations from theses and dissertations (like NDLTD) made at Pernambuco's Federal University and Sonora to deals with sound files

What school(s) are you associated or graduated from?

Computer Science Center at Pernambuco's Federal University

Why did you start this project and what is it about?

I start it because Liber aims to be a open source laboratory and we believe that this, Open Source, is important. The project is related with research areas at Liber.

What is the status and further plans for this project?

All project are started and some will have a release coming soon. The further plans are improve documents, create friendly installers and have a active community.

What kind of help are you looking for?

Discussions about system architeture, best pratices, patterns, simplicity, english language and do professional development.

Where are you located?

City: Recife
State: Pernambuco
Country: Brazil

Looking for Tapestry Examples? They're here in the Global Education and Learning Community

Tapestry seems to be one of the latest technologies coming out of the Apache/Jakarta community that is gaining steam. Tapestry lets you build web applications with objects, methods and properties instead of URLs and query parameters. But like many open source projects, it needs a little help. In order to fill the documentation and understanding gap, John Reynolds (johnreynolds@dev.java.net) started the TapestryWebComponentExamples project in the Global Education and Learning Community (GELC).

I talked with John about himself and his project. Here is what he had to say:

Tell us about yourself

I have an MSCSE from the University of Texas at Arlington, and a BSEE from Rice University in Houston. I've been a professional programmer/development manager/architect since 1980.

What local Java user group are you associated with?
Austin Java Users Group

Why did you start this project?
I published some Tapestry examples in my blog, and the feedback was very positive. Setting up a place for people to share examples seemed like a good next step.

What is the status and further plans for this project?

Keep adding examples as I get time.

What kind of help are you looking for?
I'm looking for folks to "adopt" specific Tapestry components, and add examples for those components.

Project Profile : JActionGroup2 a project for J2EE, Spring and other technologies plus Chinese translations

JActionGroup2has several different aspects from rapid development with J2E to using the Spring framework for presentation, an information platform using Spring, Ibatis, and Webwork. It also includes an all-purpose ACL model with AOP , web layer caching with caching (on Webwork). On top of all this, because the owner is in Shanghai, there is a translation of documentation from English to Chinese. They also have a larger web site with a lot of related information at http://www.jactiongroup.net

JActionGroup2 is hosted by the Global Education and Learning Community (GELC). It has swiftly made progress and has graduated from the GELC's incubator. I asked one of the project owners,Roger Ye, a few questions about himself and the project.

Tell us about yourself.

Well, I'm Roger Ye(laurince@dev.java.net). I have a Bachelor Degree, majored in Computer Sci. & Tech and my employer is Wuerth Phoenix (Shanghai).

What school are you associated or graduated from?

HUST (Huazhong University of Sci. & Tech. China)

What is your project about?

It's for the translation of the Spring Reference Documentation into Chinese, I'm interested in the Spring framework and want to donate to the community.

JActionGroup2 include two projects :

ShareJ will build a platform that that is used to share java projects for excellent technology or ideas. The platform includes open information management and articles as web components which base on Spring and Hibernate.

Spring aims to translate the Spring Framework reference into Chinese. The completed spring-reference 1.0 version was released at the Spring Chinese forum. Now we will revamp the project by converting to Docbook and use version control.

Please visit our site by http://www.jactiongroup.net for more information with the project and other information on Spring and related technologies for Chinese developers.

Where are you located?

Shanghai, China

JLogic - Object Oriented Digital Circuit Simulator

JLogic, is a digital circuit simulator with an object-oriented design and written in Java. The project has graduated in the Global Education and Learning Community (GELC) at Java.net. JLogic has also released its verst version. I had a few questions for the project owner,Alex Lam S.L. about himself and the future of JLogic:

An interview with ,Alex Lam S.L., owner of JLogic

Tell us about yourself

I'm studying in University of Cambridge as a Natural Sciences 2nd year undergrauate.
My hobbies include problem solving in general - and more specifically,
to utilise computers so as to achieve higher efficiency and effectiveness on such tasks.

Why did you start JLogic and what is it about?

Now that's interesting. I've started this project after demonstrating the idea about how powerful are objeect-oriented language,
and how they are immediately useful on some problems - I admit that I choose electronics because I have an interest in this area of studies as well. And after a whole day of programming, I tested the resulting project and find it to be rather satisfactory -
at which point I've decided to refine it as a proper project as it is indeed rather useful as a software package!

What is the status and further plans for this project?

We are currently working in 2 main directions:
1) To develop an intuitive GUI so as to make circuit design / testing a really easy job.
2) To develop a relatively comprehensive library of components so that most people would find the tool handy.

What kind of help are you looking for?

Mostly on the GUI implementation - we desperately need some geniune ideas on it, esp if there's a way to "debug" a circuit in accord to the expected specification.

Where are you located?

The (rather tiny) City of Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, UK

Looks like a great project! In fact I wish I had something like this when I got my degree :o) I invite everyone a look and joint to help him out. Join as an observer if you are interested and email Alex directly if you can help out with the next version.

Managing membership requests

One of the nuisance tasks at Java.Net is managing user membership requests. We can reduce our burden with a little information both for these requesters and ourselves.

Almost every day I get a message from someone that wants the developer role on one of my projects. Most of the time I do not know the person and they usually don't know anything about my project than what they see on its front page. On one project I actually granted several requesters a developer role, but they have not used it.

Let's make a few observations about open source membership and roles:

• Many of us don't understand what membership and roles mean
• When in doubt, people just ask for the highest role or one that is familiar (like Developer)
• Many project owners just ignore requests because they do not know what to do with members.
• Roles granted without prerequisites are not seen as important.
• A clear process will be followed by members that really want to contribute
• A promotion of a role, granted based on hard work, is respected and used appropriately to retain its status.

The common thread here is information and a process. A lack of information causes problems and clear process helps to create a better project member. If we tell current and new members what the rules are, we reduce problems plus show a clear path to advancement in a project. What follows is a simple explanation of the roles and how to attain them. Put this on your project home page where users can't help but read it.

This is not the complete story. The more information a user has on the rules and how to work with your source code, the less you need to manage the project. Include info on how to use your application, build the code, and of great importance, how to make changes to the code. Post rules on how to submit changes to your project (I have info on that here).

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How to get approved for membership roles in this project

The following are the roles, their capabilities and the process to gain access to the role.

Observer: Read-only access to project code(CVS); can also submit issues, subscribe to email, and forums.
All observers will be granted access.

Content Developer: Read/Write access to project web content (Anything in the www directory of the CVS)
Must submit a formal request to the project owner with a resume and reasons why they should be granted access to the web pages for this project and what they plan to do as soon as the role is granted.

Developer: Read/Write access to all of project
We only grant developer access to people we feel we can trust. Trust must be earned by attaching code to issues that we have reviewed. You may submit your own issues followed by code to answer an issue. We may grant developer access on the first approved code or after a few approved submissions. This will vary depending on how important or well written the code is. Please also see our rules for code.

Project Owner: Can reconfigure project and control membership
This role will only be granted by an existing project owner's discretion. You must however have already been granted a Content or Developer role and proven yourself over time.

Any of these roles may be revoked by the project owner if you do not follow the rules of the project.

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Denying Inappropriate Requests Politely

If you do get an inaproriate request, deny it as soon as possible. Put the following in the text box and it will be sent to the members that you are denying requests to:

Your request for this role is being denied at this time. Please reapply for the 'Observer' role which is always granted.

Resources

For help on the issue tracker, go here: http://www.dev.java.net/scdocs/ProjectIssues#aboutIZ
Help for using CVS: http://www.dev.java.net/nonav/scdocs/ddCVS.html

Requesting membership/roles in an open source project: http://wiki.java.net/bin/view/Gelc/RequestingMembership
Rules/Process for code submissions: http://wiki.java.net/bin/view/Gelc/ChangingCodeInOpenSource

Here is the complete list of roles and capabilities:

Observer

• Views, but does not change project resources.
• Read-only access to most project resources.
• Read-only access to web content and source code.
• Gains submit access to tracking component.
• Subscribes and posts to project mailing lists.

Developer

• Contributes directly to project -- source code and HTML.
• Gains write access to most project resources.
• Write access to HTML, announcements utility, documents and files utility, version control, and tracking component.
• Subscribes and posts to project mailing lists.

Content Developer

• Contributes directly to project's web content (HTML).
• Gains write access to project's HTML, announcements utility, documents and files utility, and tracking component.
• Subscribes and posts to project mailing lists.

Project Owner

• Defines the project's overall mission, direction, methodology, and community make-up.
• Gains administrative access to all project functions.
• Grants members requested permissions on project.
• Administers all project mailing lists and is default moderator on all lists.
• Administers tracking component.
• Project Owner role supersedes any other roles you may hold on a project.

Controlling code in your open source project

How do you manage an open source project? Part of the problems is that most owners of projects fear uncontrolled change. The second problem is really that no one wants to change code because they are afraid of breaking an unwritten rule. The key is as simple as writing downs a few rules that both make project owners feel safe to open up their software and second for contributors to feel that they can contribute source code. Rules also give owners a way to kick off a contributor that is not following the rules.

The following rules and process can be copied to your project's home page. They represent what we have seen on several successful open source projects. These rules can be modified to suit your needs, however these have been proven time and again. If you are a member of a project which has no code submission process or rules, please email a link to this blog to your project owner.

So, without further ado are the rules:

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Code Submission Rules
This is an open project so anyone that is a member can submit an issue and/or attach code to an issue to resolve an issue. However, not all code or issues will be accepted by the owners and existing developers of this project. Issues, code, comments, and documentation must be well written and pass a review by at least one of the developers and may be vetoed by any developer or the project owners. In addition we have the following code submission process. Failure to follow the process may cause you to be removed from the project.

Code Submission Process
1) All changes must be in reference to a issue to resolve a Defect, Patch, Task, Feature, or Enhancement.
2) All code to resolve the issue must be attached to an issue for review prior to committing to the database
3) All changes must be reviewed by at least one other member with developer status or the project owner
4) Any reviewed code that receives a negative review or request for modification cannot be committed until either a discussion of the code and issue reverses the negative review or that the code is modified to remove the objection. You may also be required to include comments, changes to documentation, and unit tests before code can be committed.
5) When code is posted to CVS, in the submission comment you must reference a short description of the issue, short description about the change, the issue number, and the developer ID of the reviewer.

Note: All members can submit issues and attach code modifications to the issues for review. If code is reviewed positively, you may be granted a developer role at that time or someone will post the code to CVS for you.

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Resources

For help on the issue tracker, go here: http://www.dev.java.net/scdocs/ProjectIssues#aboutIZ
Help for using CVS: http://www.dev.java.net/nonav/scdocs/ddCVS.html

Requesting membership/roles in an open source project: http://wiki.java.net/bin/view/Gelc/RequestingMembership
Rules/Process for code submissions: http://wiki.java.net/bin/view/Gelc/ChangingCodeInOpenSource

Sun Education and Research Conference

The Sun Education and Research Conference is getting started in San Francisco this week. Why is this important? The Global Education and Learning Community (GELC) is playing a part to enhance education worldwide and we are part of a focus at the conference. Most of us are not at this conference, so we need to rally ourselves within the virtual space of the java.net community. We all benefit from a better educated world. Please take the time to join the main member area for the GELC (join as an observer) and then join the GELC Discussion Forum. Let us know what you think about education and what needs to be done here at java.net to help. Also, if you own a project under the GELC, please join the Project Owner Forum.

At the GELC is not just about Java education. Yes, we excel with great Java tutoring projects (Girl's Java Cafe' and New2Java are great examples ), but that's just a small part. We have many projects to furth