 |
|
 |
 |
|
|
 Daniel Brookshier's BlogProgramming ArchivesJXTA at 5 Years OldPosted by turbogeek on April 07, 2006 at 04:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)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/
Project Spotlight SchoolClipsePosted by turbogeek on June 10, 2005 at 08:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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. Want to have your brain explode? Meet Me at JavaOnePosted by turbogeek on May 31, 2005 at 11:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)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
Say hello and keep your head! Project Graduation of TapestryWebcomponentExamples from Global Education & Learning Community IncubatorPosted by turbogeek on May 23, 2005 at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)Project Graduation and Project Spotlight Interview with John Reynolds, project owner of TapestryWebcomponentExamples One of the cool things about the Global education and Learning Community (GELC) is that we promote education of developers by fellow developers. In this case, John Reynolds, project owner of TapestryWebcomponentExamples, has offered up his time to manage examples concentrating on Jakarta's Tapestry's Java Web Components . Tapestry's Java Web Components are usedto create web applications in terms of objects, methods and properties instead of URLs and query parameters. So far there are two examples (with more on the way to explore the technology The TapestryTables.war demonstrates several features of the contrib:Table components that were authored by MindBridge. The TapestryTrees.war is an entry level introduction to the contrib:Tree components that were authored by Ceco.
This project is a great complement to Tapestry Better Pet Shop project or the docclerk projects which are also hosted here on java.net.
Project Name: TapestryWebcomponentExamples
Tell us a little 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 schools/universities did you attend? University of Texas at Arlington, and Rice University in Houston Are you a member of any Java user groups? Austin Java Users Group Tell us a little about the project and why you started it. 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 project's current status and plans for the future? Keep adding examples as I get time. What kind of help are you looking for on this project? I'm looking for folks to "adopt" specific Tapestry components, and add examples for those components. Thanks, Richard!
If you have a project on Java.net and could deal with a little extra press, please contact me for a spotlight interview - Daniel Brookshier
New projects in the Global Education and Learning Community for February 15th, 2005Posted by turbogeek on February 15, 2005 at 09:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
More projects added to the GELC. For mid-February of 2005 we have the following new projects:
Octopus - Time-sheet manager for schools with a rules approach
The Global Education and Learning Community welcomes these great projects. Take a look at theprojects and join them if you can help them out. Here are the details of each of the projects:
This project will use new tecnologies and development process metodologies for learning. The project will allow the build of a school timesheet with n teachers and n classes. The system will Rule Based looking the n possibles facts to resolve. The initial idea since project is, finally, to form a group of studies with the purpose of the construction of a product that can be used in real applications, of great usability and necessity of the business based on rules.
ini4j Java API for Windows .ini style files.
Project ini4j is a simple Java API for handling configuration files in Windows .ini format. Additionally, the library includes Java Preferences API implementation based on the .ini file.
java4web
Java4Web will be focused on the use of different frameworks and tools for web applications development
jedi
Owners: itogruet@dev.java.net, jppetines@dev.java.net, rferia@dev.java.net Development of Java courseware and curriculum for Computer Science and Information Technology education.
Project to design a POST terminal for sales log and receipts
To design a POST terminal to keep track of sales logs and print receipts for each transactions. JStateSim - Open Source Discrete Event Simulations project reaches version.7Posted by turbogeek on January 18, 2005 at 09:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
JStateSim - http://jstatesim.dev.java.net/
• Basic simulation core functionality
Interview with Dana Nourie, project owner and founder of New2Java at Java.NetPosted by turbogeek on January 14, 2005 at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Want to learn about Java and you need a place to go to start learning? What about a project with forums, email list groups, lots of source code, tutorials and people like you and a few experts willing to answer questions. Dana Nourie, a Project Leader and Writer for java.sun.com has a group called New2Java in the Global Education and Learning Community. New2Java is currently the most popular project in the Global Education and Learning Community. I thought it would be a great idea to talk to Dana and find out what her project is about and why it is so popular.
Daniel: First, tell me about yourself and what you do for a living.
Dana: I am a staff technical writer for sun, still learning all I can about Java technologies. I've also been a budding programmer for sometime, and enjoy the Java programming language because of it's wonderful diversity in application, such as being able to use it for desktop applications as well as web applications.
Why did you start the New2Java project?
We have the New to Java Programming Center on java.sun.com, but that is an information outlet for developers new to Java technologies. For the new2java project, I wanted to create a community for these developers where they can get information to get them up and running, but also where they communicate with one another and people more experienced in working with the technologies. So New to Java on java.sun.com is the information source, where as new2java on java.net is the community of people with the common interest of learning Java technologies and putting them to use.
Tell us about the type of content you have for new Java developers.
At this point I have several articles, tutorials, quizzes, and code samples that developers can use to begin learning the Java programming language and various technologies. Soon I'm going to add a dive log application I wrote as a tutorial some time ago with the hope that developers and students will dissect it, add to it, change it, improve it, use it as a communial guienea pig Java project. I also hope that others add their coding projects to new2java so other people can add to it and help improve it. I feel we can all learn more by coding together, critisizing each other's attempts in useful ways, and seeing how others approach the development process.
What kinds of questions to you get asked about by your project members?
So far it's mainly been about where to find information or what specific Java technolgies are used for and requests for more code samples.
Are there active project members adding new content to your site?
Not yet, and that's what I hope will occur soon. That's really what a comminity is about, so I hope to see code sharing. When I add the dive log project, I hope others will be inspired to critisize it, add improvements, and make big changes. If this happens, then I'd like to write articles about the changes made, show examples that demonstrated how the code was orignally and how someone improved the code. This is a dynamic process I feel we, as budding developers, can all learn from.
You have the most members of any other project in the GELC. Any thoughts to why you project is so popular?
Many people want to learn Java and just don't know where to start. Many are coming from C or C++ backgrounds and just need a quick tour, while others are new programmers, and Java technologies is their introduction to the world of application development. I think the articles, tutorials, quizzes, and code samples appeal to everyone in this group. Now, I hope they come together as a community and share their problems, their solutions, and their insights.
Anything else you would like to say?
I would like to encourage the members to use the forum to have conversations about their programming struggles, and encourage more advanced developers to help these folks resolve the issues. I'd also like to see students post their homework issues. This is an area that is heavily critisized in most forum formats, but I think sharing homework problems can be productive. I don't mean to imply that solutions should just be handed over, but people can encourage others to think about programming problems in new ways and to help the student figure it out. I'd also like to encourage teachers to post challenges or homework that they've used in their classrooms. I think it'd be fun to have a teacher do this, then to have the members crunch the solution right there live in the forum, and have other students say, Yes, but you can also do it this way!
I would like to hear from the new2java members about what their needs are and suggestions about how the new2java project can be used to help them learn. They can email me directly (dana.nourie@sun.com), or better yet share their requests with the community by emailing the mailing list: users@new2java.dev.java.net
Graduation Day in the Education and Learning Community Sept 8thPosted by turbogeek on September 08, 2004 at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
giantpicturedictionary
Imagine a web site (or desktop application) where you can type virtually any word to instantly retrieve strikingly descriptive pictures and symbols for that word. Want to know where your fourth metacarpal bone is? VERY COOL PROJECT!
Project BioBox is a collection of projects for Biology research. The first project is Bio-ClusterGrid. Bio-ClusterGrid is the first of many deployment architectures that realizes the benefit of the BioBox initiative. Implemented using Sun's Web Start Flash technology (which populates the grid computers), the core components of the Bio-ClusterGrid comprise of Sun Grid Engine (SGE), the Grid Engine Portal (GEP). With 28 of the most popular bioinformatics applications built into the Bio-ClusterGrid through the portal the system’s most important feature is saving researchers time. Biologists access the portal either through a browser in Sunray Thin Clients in the access tier or through any browser-enabled device. The Grid Engine software provides the resource management mechanism to schedule all the bioinformatics applications to run on the cluster of execution servers. The project is also international with project members in Singapore and India. The project, though open source, has been run on university computers. The project has now moved to JELC to increase exposure, add new members, and to utilize the open source tools and community servers. Indiana University Libraries Information Technology is developing a user interface for accessing digital library resources from within Sakai v1.0. Project “Twin Peaks” (separate mountains of library and course management) is a fully JSR168 (The Java community’s open Portlet Specification) compliant tool being developed as an experimental option within the new WYSIWYG authoring tool of Sakai. Twin Peaks is taking advantage of the open standards of the Sakai. Sakai is used to build integrated systems for universities and schools of higher education. Sakai is an open source project with its own open standards and open source code base to serve as a foundation for their efforts to save on costs and promote its use, integration, and collaboration in the education community. Twin Peaks is using JELC along with the Sakai project to increase their reach to other universities. Though Sakai is open, the membership is not and that limits the number of collaborators that Twin Peaks would like to attract. JELC provides a truly open and free community outside Sakai and allows the Twin Peak team to interact with other library science developers. Networking Java Framework The main statement about the RFWNet is to provide a source for Java and Software Engineer students initiation through professional Java development (i.e. not "Toy Programs") based upon Software Engineering techniques like GoF Design Patterns. This goal is aimed to achieve through the delivery of a dynamically extensible multithreaded server (following a Servlet-like extension model) for TCP/IP (socket) servers. Java applets to simulate Physics phenomena Some students have a hard time learning Physics because the subject is to abstract. Having simulation applets can help them to better understand Physics phenomena. Therefore, we want to develop Java applets to simulate some phenomena which are difficult to understand. People can also request us to develop some applets for them. The project can be extended into other fields such as chemistry, biology, geophysics, engineering, etc. Current simulations include: cellular, charge, pendulum, projectile, wave. These are very cool and include code for a lot of different modes of graphical representation. java open source info platform Jactiongroup include two projects : sharej will build a platform that share java projects for excellent tech or idea.The platform include open information management and correlative articles as web components which base on spring and hibernate. spring is a translating project which plan to translate springframework reference into Chinese for the more developers within springframework.(We had completed spring-reference 1.0 version on spring chinese forum).Now we will revamp the project by docbook and version control. please visit our site by http://www.jactiongroup.net for getting more information with the projects. Edit and apply Alghorithms on Graphs like Dijkstra, Bellman Ford This is a GraphTool helped me to understtand better Graphs Theory This is a tool for Graphs Learning. It has an IDE where you can draw edit, move, delete, save, open, etc. graphs. It is easy to use and has a very intuitive interface... JavaOne - Day Two - The Rise of BuzzPosted by turbogeek on June 29, 2004 at 11:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)Today we got to see the sunny side of Scott McNealy at the keynote today. I have to admit that I like to hear that man talk. The key thing that he said that got my attention was that there were 14,000 developers at JavaOne. That is almost like before the crash! Almost everything but the requisite T-Shirt lofting at the end of the talk was just icing on the cake of the Java economy(the T-Shirt lofter self-destructed after 3 shots - but it did look real cool). Even making nice with Microsoft is less a happening than knowing that the developer community is thriving. If you can afford to go to JavaOne, there must be some money in the economy. Tonight we also had our meeting of the minds for java.net. There were a lot of people there and the conversations were loud and hard to stop - even when we announced a few cool prizes. I heard lots of talk about opportunity knocking. There are a lot of new projects out there and a lot entrepreneurial work too. With a down economy the smart people are replacing the defunct companies. I heard of a lot of people making their way in small businesses with cool ideas. I was able to show off a few of mine too like 312 Inc's LeanOnMe P2P backup software, Quantum Chess (a P2P chess variant), and Venezia-Gondola (P2P ebay killer) all written in JXTA. I also heard a lot of talk that Java technology is getting bigger and better. As an example, JXTA is now faster and easier. Tools and techniques are also improving. I also saw that Java is still bigger than you can absorb. There are a lot of API out there for all sorts of applications. Thank goodness we have Google or we would never find these great tools and products. Today was also another day of meeting people. I must have met 30 people that know me, but only online. It is always a surprise to find that nobody looks like their smiley faces :o) I am amazed at how conversations always turned to business or succeeding with Java. Education and Java started to become apparent today. I met several people form different universities. There were students and professors, all seeming to be working on very cool projects. More to come. Tomorrow there is a JXTA session and a BOF. I'll be at the session and might make the BOF. I need to share my time with the NoMagic folks( makers of MagicDraw UML, a 100% Java UML modeler). If you are interested, I'll be teaching a short course in UML Wednesday night and will be signing copies of my JXTA book. Come by the NoMagic Booth and sign up, we have only limited seating. Stay tuned! Two more days to go! Education And Research Becomes JELCPosted by turbogeek on May 27, 2004 at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)Education and Research Becomes JELC Every once in a while you have something that someone else is looking for. You learn a skill and someone wants to hire you for that skill. You have a spare room, and a good roommate shows up. Well the Education and Research Community at java.net has the skills and the spare room and guess who shows up? How about the rest of the world? Europe to China and the African continent to the Americas, the leaders and managers of education are seeing java.net as a resource they have been dreaming about. When the rest of the world is just outside on your door step, it’s time to clean house and get ready for the new tenants. That’s what we are doing this week because we are re-launching the community to reflect a new worldwide focus. The Birth of the Java Education and Learning Community (JELC) Our original Education and Research community is being reborn as the Java Education and Learning Community (JELC), a new java.net community. Extra support from Sun Microsystems along with the original community leaders will give researchers, teachers, programmers, authors, corporate trainers, administrators, public officials, students and others a place to find, develop and share Java-based open source educational tools, open learning standards implementations, and open course learning materials. The idea for the JELC was formed March 1, 2004 at the first Lifelong Learning Forum in Madrid, Spain, a meeting where Sun's CEO Scott McNealy and 40 representatives from 25 Ministries of Education around the world discussed common challenges in implementing a policy of lifelong learning to develop individual skills to increase national competitiveness. By merging with JELC, the Education and Research community brings over 80 Java-based open source projects in education, along with an active membership and established processes for working together as a community. Java has become universally accepted in higher education. Over the last few years, governments around the world have been embracing open source as a means of controlling costs and reducing time to implementation. There have been few cross-border efforts at open source collaboration and sharing of best practices at an international level. The JELC seeks to break down some of those barriers to promote widespread adoption of Java-based open source tools and infrastructure. All existing java.net Education and Research projects remain unchanged, except that they are in a different community now. The project areas of the JELC are modeled on those of the Education and Research, but there are some new areas (like Public Policy) and some things were combined (like Student Projects instead of Class Projects and Student Thesis). There will be more changes, but these will help us organize for the flood of countries joining our community. Project submission and selection, community leadership, and community governance will remain the same as they always have been. The benefit to existing java.net members is that the JELC will provide a wider, more high-level exposure to Java-based open source projects that can really make a difference in education and learning on a global scale. The Lifelong Learning Focus Another focus is Lifelong Learning. Simply you should be learning your whole life. But what does this have to do with JELC? Simply that we are creating educational content and tools to help anyone learn whether in a traditional school, adult education, trade group, or even a community dedicated to a subject area. Using open source education tools gives everyone the ability to create and enhance centers of learning quickly and at a low cost. Lifelong learning is also a focus from corporations to whole countries. Simply it is the only way to compete in the marketplace. Skills are no longer static and new technology is always evolving. Even a blue-collar worker needs computer and other skills. White-collar workers have their own ever-changing mix of technologies. Enabling learning through innovative open source technologies, in our case via Java, is the most cost effective way to deliver education to the masses throughout their working lives. You are the Community I want to make it perfectly clear, we are still a community and still under java.net. We have a few more monetary resources and new staff from Sun to help build and manage the community. But we are still a group of volunteers and passionate people. We are about to get a lot more projects and people. We are still a Java community. You may see some mention of other technology like Linux, but in relationship to Java. Part of the JELC effort is of course because of Sun so there are new Sun people running around like developers, sales people, and marketing. Most are new to open source communities so please help educate them on the do’s and don’ts. Learning From Educators as Customers We are going to also have forums for discussing education in terms of teaching, learning, and administration. As developers we need to know requirements of our customers. You might say that you were (or still are) a student and know all about education, what do we need to know about building academic software. Believe me, I thought that too until I started asking educators and administrators about their jobs. We need more than our collective experience; we need information from the trenches. And if you are an educator or administrator, feel free to tell us what you need to teach or manage your school. A Community of World-Wide Volunteers One of the interesting things going on is that the world is coming. We have a few projects in other languages, but we are going to have many more. One of the bigger issues we will have is just language. English is pervasive but there are a lot of people that only speak their mother tongue. If you know a language other than English and would like to help us, let us know. Be a leader or Be a Volunteer We need new projects, we need people to help with existing projects and we need everything from web content developers to volunteers to help our projects grow. But why volunteer or lead a project? The simplest reason is that you are interested. You might also need what a project is building and need to get your input to make sure it turns out right. But there are other benefits like meeting your fellow developers, exchanging ideas, and of course doing something important for your community and the world. Participation also adds to your experience and to your resume. Working on open source projects is now just as important as the jobs where you collect a paycheck. JELC Founding Advisory Committee Members Because we are about to become a much bigger community, we also need some big time advice. To help us, we have recruited some high caliber leaders to advise our community. Here are the advisors, their positions, and links to their biographies. Mr. Ira Fuchs
Mr. John Gage
Ms. Kim Jones, Vice President Global Education and Research, Sun
Microsystems, Inc.
Mr. Mike Keller
Dr. M. S. Vijay Kumar
Mr. Scott McNealy Mr. Alessandro Musumeci Where is the new JELC?
Here are our new links. The first is our portal, which is just like the java.net portal with news, links, a wiki, and other collaboration tools. In the near future I will be looking for your help to write articles and add to forums and wiki content.
Next is our new development portal. We have created new categories and consolidated a few project areas. All of the existing projects are still here. We will work on this area over the next week to put projects in their proper place and to document the procedures for each project area.
What's next for JELC? The future is bright for JELC. We are already starting to add new projects. The new portal is also up and running so that we can get news and exchange ideas in our community. Remember also that what comes next is also partly up to you. Education is the future and you are part of creating that future. Good luck everyone and let's get to work on the future of education! If you have any additional questions or comments please post to our Discussion Forum.
When planning for a year, plant corn. Killer Applications and JXTAPosted by turbogeek on March 26, 2004 at 11:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Some technologies don't gain wide adoption until there is an application used by a large number of users. We call them killer applications because they are so compelling or in fact kill a problem dead. For the personal computer it was the spreadsheet (Visicalc was the first and it was copied by the rest) and at about the same time, the word processor. What will be the killer application for JXTA? Is it already here?
Napster was a killer application. Sadly it was done in a way that was not legal. I won't go into the politics of record companies and free speech - the fact is that Napster was taken out of play by the courts. Yes there are other music sharing and purchasing applications, but nothing as big as Napster. But the other problem is that it was only about music (at least the killer part). There was no real big application associated with general business or entertainment based on the P2P/Central-Index scheme of Napster. Don't think that there are not other file sharing applications doing quite well. In fact, there are file sharing applications written in JXTA that support thousands of users in legitimate business applications. They may become the new 'next big thing' but I see it as just a better way to share files rather than the ultimate killer application.
Sometimes a killer application just makes things easier. Struts is making it even easier to develop web applications. Ant makes it easier to build and maintain projects. XDoclets reduces labor via its code generation capabilities. All these examples are starting to be widely adopted because of their productivity improvements. Can JXTA make things easier? JXTA has all the hallmarks of reduced effort. First, there is no real server involved. Imagine the time, money, and sweat equity saved by not dealing with the monolithic server and its support system. But that's just economics - where is the savings for the common man? Let's look a little at one of the key ideas about JXTA.
What makes JXTA unique? It's not about Peer-to-Peer (P2P). P2P is just a fuzzy buzzword that means computers talking to to computers. What abut JXTA is that it places the Internet inside applications rather than the browser. This also means the gestalt of the application includes a real interface, storage, and can be run 24 hours a day if needed. The quote below is from Juan Taylor, which covers this quite nicely: What s the ONE thing that P2P can do that client/server can't? It's that the Client can be a Server. WHY would the client want to be a server? To share information Easily and in different and even complex (only jxta can do this) ways in a 'User to User' way. In anonymous file-sharing there is an innate loss of wanting to share files. In a User to User perspective, there is an immediate desire to share. There's the Benefit, and the complexity of which only JXTA can handle. What this means simply is that unlike client server, JXTA is client/server and server/client or even server to server or client to client. The information, storage, processing, and communications can start at either end. In the world of applications this also means that I don't have to work in a world of centralized resources where there are multiple issues. The worst problem of course is just the impedance mismatch between the world of application and the world of web applications.
So, what if every client was a server? Sadly it is not all about efficiency. I say sadly because P2P is all about wasted space and CPU cycles. The sad part is the knee jerk reaction many have to waste. But the fact is that replicating data and the power of your own CPU verses a shared server is far safer and can be orders of magnitude more efficient in getting the job done. The waste is insignificant in terms of the modern PC with their large disks and often idle CPU's. When you trade inefficiency in an area that is monetarily insignificant, the gain in productivity is essentially for free.
The forum interface is similar to those on Java.net. Basically a forum is a threaded discussion. The oldest version of this is the old news forums which still exists but has been taken over by spam. Think of it as a server based email that anyone can read or submit messages. What would a P2P Forum look like? First the history of the messages need to be available to anyone. This a great feature of the forum because it lets you search for a conversation in the past. Guess what, that has to be on a PC since there is no server. Here comes the duplication of effort: To make this work, keeping the history on as many computers as possible increases the speed of the search. The search is really fast if you have your own copy. If the forum history is very large, and is bigger than that free 5 gigabytes on your disk, we can share different sections of the data. We still need a lot of copies because some peers may go off line.
Ok, does it hurt your sense of efficient computing yet? I remember being unable to use linked lists and hash tables for years because my professor in college was so anal that memory was the most important thing in the world. He put speed and ease of use far far down the list of importance.
Ok, now back to killer applications. What if we added a P2P forum to a development tool? First, because it is part of the tools, the focus is like a laser. The efficiency of use is very close to the tool because it is the tool. Have a weird exception? It is a click to add it verses cut and paste and a little reformatting. Wondering what the correct settings are for a task? What if the expert could reply with his settings which you can just use rather than interpret a poorly formatted and worded answer. Yes I have perhaps a couple gig of messages, but I have the world's greatest integrated help system. These ideas are Copyright Daniel Brookshier 2004, all rights and derivative patents can not be used by Microsoft or its agents. Free use to those that use 100% Java and JXTA to implement the solution. Ideas like this need to be free to make life less like walking on broken glass.
JXTA is a killer capability that will make a good application a great application. Making every a PC a server seems like a good idea. Not every solution will benefit, but there are a few thousand new ideas that JXTA makes possible. Look at the world upside down. Be the server. Education And Research Community at Java.NetPosted by turbogeek on March 16, 2004 at 09:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)Introducing the Education and Research Community Java.Net is a very big place on the net nowadays. There are a lot of communities and hundreds of projects. But what is in each community? Why would you host your project in one or the other? Today I am going to tell you about one of the Java.Net communities I manage, Education and Research (E&R). But first, Education and Research? Why? In part, education needs software too. There are actually many open source projects developing software related to education. Some of the older projects are beginning to migrate to Java.Net to take advantage of the community and services provided here. But there is more than software for the sake of education. There are also projects related to student thesis and school projects. There are also many researchers that need a space to work with their peers in an open way. Face it, we have good tools, a great overall community and its all free. Why not support education and our researchers that need all the help they can get? This community is used by students, teachers, and individuals to create software for all aspects of education and learning from classroom management systems to teaching tools, to hosting projects of students for projects and thesis work. We also host tutorials for learning various subjects, authors post their code and sample chapters for books, and we also host academic research and thesis work. This community is also important for collaboration between educators, students, and developers of educational software. We host discussions and areas for exploration important for learning or exploring new ideas and new technologies. Why Host a Project in E&R? E&R is definitely a loose community as far as projects go. We focus on education, so project here relate to schools, students, educators, or even the ongoing education of developers and managers. So tutorials, code examples, books, educational software, school management, testing, etc. can all be hosted or found here. We cross a wide range of the other communities from J2EE to Swing to Linux. As long as it is related to education and research, you can see there are advantages hosting in a community of teachers and students. But why not another community? Why host a JXTA tutorial here when there is already a JXTA community? Simply this area is the place to go to learn just like a school is a place to learn. If you are hosting a new project you will have the tools to create and manage learning systems for new projects. We will be cross-linking the communities so that the core community has a link to the educational community hosting its tutorials. This way we can concentrate on the education aspects of a project as a whole plus get help from the experts in the subject community. Another reason to host your project here is if it is highly experimental. Trying to refine an algorithm, experiment with different designs, implementing a new type of user interface? E&R is open to the educational, the new, the cool, and the strange. Math, science, the arts, and other subjects that we associate with academic and scientific endeavors too. Education, research, or the odd duck that's hard to classify, E&R is the community space for you and your project.We are getting things started, so there are just a few projects right now and we are looking for more. Add your own or join an existing one. Roll up your sleeves and lets write some great software or have a rousing discussion.
Project Areas There are a lot of subjects in education and even more in research. To create a sense of order, we have divided the E&R community into several project areas. See if you can find an area or a project in that area that fits your needs and interests. If you have a project proposal and need a new category, let us know.
Community Leaders for E&R: Dr. Robert S. Stephenson, Daniel Brookshier.
Daniel Brookshier
| |
 java.net RSS Feeds
|
