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

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.

Name: Edward Ribeiro
JXTA ID: edwardribeiro
University of Brasilia, Brasilia

Daniel Brookshier (Q): Tell us a bit about yourself.

Edward Ribeiro (A): I am a second year MSc. student at University of Brasilia (Brazil). I am currently working in a government institution in Brazil.

Q: How long have you been working with JXTA?
A: I have been working with JXTA since the beginning of 2005. Nevertheless, I have played with it during short periods of time since its creation.

Q: What are you using JXTA for and in particular why use Peer-to-Peer as a
solution to your problem?
A: My masters dissertation is centered on distributed systems applied to computational biology problems and it is heavily based on JXTA. We are trying to develop a P2P "cluster-like" system to process DNA sequences on BLAST. We think the P2P model can be scalable and flexible solution to distributed programs execution and, of course, we were highly inspired by the good example of Protein@HOME.

We have just finishing our first prototype using JXTA. It works well, but there are some open questions/bugs related to JXTA that need to be solved before deploying it. My advisor was very happy with the little demo I showed.

Q: What attracted you to choose the JXTA technology and platform?
A: It is the most mature P2P solution in the market. I could have written a customized P2PP2P solution, but this was not the point in the dissertation work. I needed a mature platform to implement further ideas on it.

Q: What open source JXTA projects are you working on?
A: I could say that I am particularly interested in the 'platform' project. I keep posting on a regular basis and solving doubts as much as possible. I hope to be deep involved in this project after defending my thesis. I am particularly interested in the jxta-c project, but I didn't have any free time to spend on it.

Q: Is your company using JXTA and if please describe it if you can?
A: There's a consortium of universities paying a close attention at my project. They want to use the distributed infrastructure that I am building. Therefore, JXTA can potentially be used to integrate all these universities in a comp. biology network.

Q: In either your company or in your open source projects, do you need help and if so what skills or experience are you looking for?
A: My project is a great JXTA testbed and I would be more the grateful if you could provide me some personal advice. It needs to be secure, encouraged.

Q: What JXTA platform(s) are you using (J2SE, J2ME, C)?
A: J2SE

Q: This is for us to do a better job, what do you think needs to be added to the JXTA.org web site to help you?
A: At first, I think that data transmission (pipes, jxtasockets, jxtabidipipes) should have the highest rank in a priority list, because jxtasockets and jxtabidipipes are not 100% reliable or efficient as plain sockets. I could certainly live with some degree of inefficiency, but unreliability makes me too upset. A related point in this area would be the addition of QoS (Quality of Service) to JXTA.

Finally, an updated version of JXTA inner workings. Something like this (http://wiki.java.net/bin/view/Jxta/JXTAImplementationUseCases#Publish_an_advertisement).

Q: One more question: What is your most burning question about JXTA or P2P development? (I'll reply if I have the answer)
A: Could you suggest a good presence design for JXTA? I have implemented my own, but it is not quite reliable as I would like to.:-)

Q: I would be happy to! Try https:commons.jxta.org where we have some good code for a simple presence system.

Thank you for your time!

You are welcome.:-)

Here is his description of the project: The jxta-based project, called Juxta-CAT, is an effort to use the JXTA architecture to build a job execution-sharing distributed environment. The client peers from this network can use this environment to submit/run their own jobs, basically, programs written in Java and stored on signed jar files, which can use nodes reachable from the net.

So, now we know the project, who is Joan, and why JXTA? Here is the interview that tells all:

Name: Joan Esteve Riasol
JXTA ID: jestever
Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, in Barcelona, Spain

Q: Tell us a bit about yourself.

I was born in Barcelona (SPAIN) on 1981. I've always lived in this nice Mediterranean city.

I began to feel interested on programming when I started my studies on Technical Computing Engineering, in the Computing Faculty of Barcelona. Before that, I did not used to spend too much time learning about programming languages.

When I started my first classes, I knew that I had chosen the best Career for me. I discovered that I was good and fast with design, development and object-oriented programming. Besides, I took Java as my favorite language to deploy my applications. learning about programming languages.

On 2003, I published my first complete application developed with Java (An applet-based Local Search resolver using XML) It was presented as my degree's thesis. Thanks to the experience gained during this work, I got a job as Java Developer in my University. I've been working here up to now, increasing my skills on Java and learning more about this technology.

After my thesis exposure, I decided to continue my university studies, and I began the second part of my degree: High Computing Engineering (in the same Faculty). I'm going to finish it very soon, because The Project Juxta-Cat is the master thesis that I'm going to present to reach my qualifications. It will be the second thesis written by me.

Computing apart, there are also other important things in my life. I like to practice sport (mountain bike is my favorite). I also love to travel, go out with my friends, stay with my family... I think that everyone needs to distinguish work from free-time, because both things are necessary to be happy during his life.

Q: How long have you been working with JXTA?

I heard about JXTA on 2004, and I have been using this technology up to now.

Q: What attracted you to choose the JXTA technology and platform?

I discovered JXTA when I got involved in a research Project for my University. This application, called "E-RUC", became a file-sharing environment which catalogues its contents using the MPEG-21 specification.

My work-package consisted in develop a suitable sharing platform which allow users to transfer the catalogued contents over the network. Those contents had to be signed using MPEG security issues, in order to create something different than Emule, Kazaa, and other P2P applications already released. The main goal was to exploit the MPEG-21 possibilities.

The JXTA technology was mentioned during a brainstorming with my work partners. We had to decide the most suitable P2P architecture for our project. I was responsible for prepare a report about JXTA and expound it to my supervisors.

I think that we finally choose to use JXTA at "E-RUC" for three reasons:

- Its an architecture built in Java, which supposes an easy integration with other applications developed in this language.

- It has proved that JXTA enjoys a very good maintenance and tracking: Sun developers & contributors who announce new releases every 2-3 months, mailings lists with active members asking and solving their answers there, excellent documentation, helpful wiki,...

- Several interesting open-source projects involved in this technology and already released: JxtaShell, MyJXTA and CMS (which includes file-sharing management)

Q: What open source JXTA projects are you working on?

After several months using JXTA on "E-RUC", I decided to perform my skills by proposing a Master Thesis related to this architecture. This Master Thesis is called "Juxta-CAT Project!" and I'm very near to publish its first stable release.

During its implementation I checked, as observer, other projects published at jxta.org. For example:

JXTA-Shell: As a starting point to understand the JXTA's internal policy: rendezvous & edge peers, pipe connections, peer visibility, advertisements management, etc...

MyJXTA2: As an idea of complete client-side application that works with this technology. Finally, I decided to implement my own classes diagrams and design patterns. But I could collect several ideas obtained from Gonzo's work. learning about programming languages.

CMS: As a File-sharing environment.

Q: Is your university using JXTA and if please describe it if you can?

I don't know if my university, the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, is currently handling other master thesis related with JXTA. But It must be possible, because the impact and spreading of JXTA are increasing every day!

Q: In either your projects, do you need JXTA what was that hardest part?

My main problems with JXTA appeared during the understanding and management of JxtaBidiPipes and Peer's Cache handling. Furthermore, I think that we could publish more samples explaining how to JXTA stores the discovered advertisements through the network.

Q: What JXTA platform are you using?

I've developed E-RUC (project at work) and Juxta-CAT (project as Master Thesis) using J2SE platform of JXTA. Usually downloading latest releases when they are announced. If everything's fine with my Thesis, I'm going to start learning JXME in order to work in a new Project, called "MEDIAMOBIL", which will pretend to research peer-to-peer technologies applied on mobile systems.

Q: This is for us to do a better job, what do you think needs to be added to the web site to help you?

The website is very complete and easy-to-use. The core applications and libraries are well documented. Mailing lists are also well-managed, and people feel free to participate on them.

If I'd become JXTA web administrator, I think that I'd try to improve the Tutorials section: it includes several old examples. I think I have talked about this in above questions.

Q: What is your most burning question about JXTA?

About the projects published on JXTA, I think that one of them is going to be forgotten by JXTA community. It's the JXTA Metering Project. I used to need this API for my projects, and all the documentation and mailing activity is becoming scarce (last posts on 2003). I had several problems when recompiling with Ant my first jxta releases by adding the modification of "meteringEnabled" property.

I have also found problems when I've tried to integrate the JXTA Shell in my own Swing-based applications. I still don't have found a suitable way to use SwingShellConsole, ShellConsole or other classes from shell.jar. I finally decided to use the solution offered by James Todd on MyJXTA: launch Shell as an independent app over the peerGroup and opening the Frame in a separate window. I'm not able to manage the Shell's content pane in order to include it on my Swing-based projects.

Brian Koontz created the Open Source Technology certificate program at
North Lake College in Irving Texas. This is near Dallas and in fact just

around the proverbial corner from my home. I learned about the program
from Slashdot through this link. It seemed like a great idea to see what
it was all about by talking to Brian and to post the interview here.

So, let's talk with Brian and see what this is all about.

Daniel Brookshier Q: First, tell us a little bit about yorself and how you got into
teaching computer science.

Brian Koontz A: While working as an air traffic controller in East Texas in the

early 90s, the thought occurred to me that there wasn't much of a
future for a retired controller. At the time, I've long held an
interest with computers and programming, so I decided the time was
right to formalize my technology experience and began working on my
M.S. in Computer Science at UT-Tyler. Times were good back then for
technology work, so I had no trouble walking away from my life as a
controller and into the world of technology.

After six years in the IT business, I was laid off as a consultant
shortly after 9/11. I had been tutoring math students at a local high
school, and thought teaching might be an interesting vocation. I
obtained my state teaching certificate in math and computer science,
and taught high school honors math and AP computer science courses for
the next three years, followed by my current stint as the Computer
Science program coordinator and OSS zealot at North Lake College.

Q: You have stirred up the developer world with the announcement that
you have a certificate program in open source. What has the reaction
been so far?

A: Very positive. Having braced myself for what I expected to be a
critical response to the announcement of our program on Slashdot, I
was pleasantly surprised that many comments were actually supportive
of the program. However, even before the Slashdot posting, the
program has received a warm reception from members of the various
local OSS-related users' groups. The encouragement from these groups
means the world to me, and I'm grateful for their continued support.

Q: Open source seems like it is expanding in its reach and use every
day. But the real measure of the mainstream is when it becomes part
of a teaching curriculum. What was it that made that transition for
you to go after students interested in open source?

A: Part of the reason is purely personal in nature: I've been
involved with various aspects of OSS development and support since
1996 (I cut my teeth on perl and vi, and have never looked back).
OSS has benefited my personal and professional life in so many ways;
it has always been my intention to contribute something back to the
OSS community which gives so freely of itself. On a professional
level, I've watched as Microsoft certification programs have dwindled
away, and decided it was time open source stepped up to the plate.

Q: I noticed that one of the classes is related to the philosophy of
open source. How did 'philosophy' bubble up to the curriculum?

A: Proprietary licenses exist in a realm that is defined by the paper
they are written on and the legal structure that is used to defend
them. When a company chooses to adopt an OSS solution, there are
some changes in philosophy that managers must be willing to embrace
for a successful adoption. As an example: Managers must realize
that they now shoulder some of the responsibility for technical
support and innovation with OSS, rather than relying exclusively upon a vendor
to supply such services (often at an exorbitant cost). While the myth
that service and support for OSS is non-existent still persists, true cost
savings with OSS are realized only if companies are willing to devote
in-house resources to customization and tech support.

Q: One of the questions I am asked a lot is, how do you make money in
open source? Since one of the reasons for education is to prepare for
a job, how are you approaching this question in the design of the
classes for the certification?

A: It's my belief that as OSS continues to gain corporate acceptance,
these companies will recognize the value in an employee who
understands what Open Source is about and can apply Open Source
principles to the company's bottom line. To me, Open Source is more
than just another collection of software tools used in the workplace.
It's a mindset that encourages innovation and the synergy that comes
from many individuals putting their collective wisdom together to
solve problems.

Q: One trend today is a blurring of working life and open source
community life. For example, I run several projects, I am a member of
others, I write books/articles/blogs on open source for fun/profit, I
am an open source community manager, and have always used pieces of
open source in code for many years. I see myself using some open
source for my job, some as a hobby and some as a career growth.
Do you think that this blurring of hobby verses career becoming
more pervasive? Will you be teaching open source as a career path
and as a sort of high-end continuing education?

A: We've already made plans to offer the courses as both credit and
continuing ed classes. In fact, continuing education is actually
geared towards the role of workplace training: Many employers who pay
for training will do so only if the courses are continuing ed courses.
But whether a course is taking for credit or CEUs is really beside
the point: The Open Source Technology certificate has been designed to
provide students with a solid foundation in Open Source technology and
best practices, while still allowing students who simply want to take
selected courses to do so without having to navigate a maze of course
prerequisites.

Q: Communities like java.net and sourceforge are sort of generic open
source communities that anyone can participate in. Do you have
students work in these communities? Do you teach them how to run and/
or participate in their own open source projects?

A: What a great idea! Student are required to demonstrate
familiarity with on-line help resources and code repositories in each
OSS course; I believe a successful OSS developer should be as
self-reliant as is possible when it comes to interacting with the OSS
community. Plans are in the works to develop two capstone courses
which take students through a complete OSS development lifecycle, and
that would be the ideal time to introduce students to the mechanics of
making their work publicly available, as you've suggested.

Q: LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL,Perl/PHP/Python)seems like a pretty
big subject. What is the focus and what elements are you expecting
a student to learn?

A: Actually, it's four separate semester-long classes at this point.
The goal of the program is for students to successfully incorporate
the knowledge gained in the certificate course (including LAMP) to
successfully design and implement a project of their choosing in the
final two capstone courses. We provide the tools (and encouragement)
for building successful OSS applications; it's up to the students to
discover new and innovative ways to use them.

Q: Open source is a fairly big arena. As an educator, how did
you choose what subjects to teach?

A: Before I was an educator, I was a software designer, developer, and
architect, so I've taken the liberty of drawing from my experiences
with various projects I've been involved with to put together a series
of courses I believe every developer should have exposure to.

Q: I'm a community manager. In fact I am moving into my second job
with this title this month. I have also served as a corporate
representative to open source communities to further corporate goals.
I bring this up because it seems that there are now many different
possible jobs in the open source world that are paid positions. Do
you think that education will evolve to include these, or will we
fill these positions through related education and experience?

A: I believe the Open Source Technology certificate program at North
Lake is on the forefront of "formal" OSS education. We're leading the
wagons down a lightly-trodden trail that few educational institutions
have traveled. As more companies come on board with OSS projects (and
no longer shy away from OSS as a "dirty little secret" to be hidden
from shareholders and customers), they're going to find themselves
tapping a market that is bereft of developers with adequate OSS
skillsets. Those who have had the foresight to pick up OSS skills
along the way will be in a prime position to take advantage of OSS job
opportunities.

Q: If you could create a full BS degree in open source software, what
would the goals be?

A: Too many BS degrees in IT/COSC focus more on mechanics than on
practical experience. Many graduates from these programs don't have a
clue when it comes to good software design practices (I know; I've
been there!). To answer your question, I'd have to answer
a precursor question: How can IT/COSC BS degrees be revamped in order
to produce graduates will real-world software application development
skills? Trying to develop an OSS-themed BS degree without a major
overhaul of the programs that currently pass for technology education
is premature. Ask me the question again when you find an IT/COSC BS
program that prepares its students for the real world!

Links
Weblog for the Open Source Technology program at North Lake College
North Lake College
Fall 2005 Schedule

Technorati Tags: education, Graduation

But this time we also have a very cool project called Clicker that aims at creating an open source version of the "clicker" device we see in some classrooms today. As you may know, the clicker is used to get instant feedback to a teacher and can be used for classroom interaction. In essence, it is like an audience participation vote device. Clickers are not always cheap or even well made and many schools put the burdon of cost and care to the student. It is inevitable that a student would see that there might be a better way. I recently was watching a documentary (Scientific American Frontiers?) that used a clicker and was amazed at the contortions of students trying to hit the infrared detectors in the classroom - not a ringing endorsement. There has to be a better way and so open development to the rescue. Let's see if we can create a better system!

Here is the summary list. Click below to see the slightly summarized details from each of the project proposals.

clicker - Open source "clicker" implementation

Monos - Monos Algebra Software
papaf - Path Planning Framework
CLEW - Collegiate Educational Website (CLEW)
StudyBuddy - Mindmapping, essay organiser, revison scheduler
wordsearchpuzzle - A project for a programming class
OnlineExamination - A user friendly exam
Open-Gradebook - A easy to use, non-intrusive grading system for teachers.

This is a project to build an open source "clicker" implementation. Clickers are used in the education community to allow students to input answers, using remote control style devices, into a professor's computer. As a college student this project owner is rather annoyed at having to spend a small fortune on clickers and their associated "services". He also believes the open source community can build clickers and clicker software better, faster, and easier than commercial concerns. Plans: The software side will be built very soon. We will be building a client-server style interface, where a server side interprets the input from clickers, and aggregates/formats the data. Clients will be able to use XML-RPC or a Socket connection to retrieve and manipulate the server side.

Monos - Monos Algebra Software

The Monos Algebra software provides the ability to compute with monomial and binomial ideals. It provides the following mathematical objects/computations:

• Monomials and Monomial Ideals
• Binomial and Binomial Ideals
• Compute a binomial groebner basis.
• Compute a groebner basis of a toric ideal from matrix.
• Compute an integer kernel for an integer matrix.
• Compute a scarf complex for an ideal.

It also provides:

• A full Java library API.
• Integration with smallx XML pipelines.
• Integration with xeerkat for grid computing.
• A scripting language based on R5RS.

There are no know issues in the current release. A binary release is forthcoming but the source should build and work. All the source for the library, programs, or web applications are in CVS. There are also ant build scripts for all the projects built from the Netbeans IDE. There is a demonstration of the Monos Algebra Software deployed at milowski.com. This application interacts with a set of web services that use monos for computations. You can also submit computations on a Xeerkat based P2P grid to compute larger results. Monos was developed by R. Alexander Milowski. See his website for papers on the algorithms uses.

papaf - Path Planning Framework

This project is aimed to allow the quickly test and compare of new algorithms of path-planning problems. Those algorithms, can be used to route IP packages, plan robot's paths, get a better route between two places, and more. The project is looking for new algorithms, so if you have one, please contact them. The docs are currently in Portuguese, so please help translate them.

CLEW - Collegiate Educational Website (CLEW)

Collegiate Educational Website (CLEW) that is being used at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

StudyBuddy - Mindmapping, essay organiser, revison scheduler

This project has two main objectives. First, llow the phased development of a free, high quality tool designed to help students study more effectively (see StudyBuddy Outline on the StudyBuddy project page). The second objective is to create the opportunity for intermediate level Java students to learn how to apply their skills and knowledge to a remotely managed, team based software development project. Although the primary goal is to develop a high quality tool, the environment of this project is intended to allow people to make mistakes and to learn from those mistakes.

wordsearchpuzzle - A project for a programming class

Sometimes we get projects that are for helping a student with a goal. Please see the project home page for specifics about the class project. Looks like this fellow could use the help of a good begineer programming mentor.

OnlineExamination - A user friendly exam

A user friendly exam project consist of objective type questions.

Open-Gradebook - A easy to use, non-intrusive grading system for teachers.

A easy to use, non-intrusive open source grading system for teachers. Parents and students will be able to login to the system and see progress as well.

compdoc2cn - Component Doc to Chinese
credweb - Academic project simulating an Web Interface of a Credit System
EpA - A web cooperative editor for learning environments
GHIN - Global Health Information Network
JAC - Vocabulary Trainer for Chinese
kids - help kids to learn and use Java
nb-elearning - eLearning Portal for Viet Nam.
Open Gradebook - Easy to use, non-intrusive open source grading system.
sfsucsc868group1f05 - CSc868 Group 1 Coursework
ufskart - Educational project through a virtual store.
virtual-campus - Virtual-Campus will be a feature rich E-learning / P2P tool
webbrowser - WebBrowser inclues various taste of different popular browser.

Here are the details of the projects:

compdoc2cn - Component Doc to Chinese

Component Doc to Chinese is a basement for translate all kinds of valuable document to chinese. implements the component's i18n document support.
https://compdoc2cn.dev.java.net/images/docbooklogo.png
The current todo list is to translate the un-official document of Prototype JavaScript Framework to chinese. Developer Notes for prototype.js The tools of writing docbook document is XMLmind XML Editor .

credweb - Academic project simulating an Web Interface of a Credit System

An Web Interface for a Bank Credit System. The partner companies and the bank should be able to work with proposals. The companies should be able to simulate, register, and send proposals to the Bank. The Bank should be able to aprove/reprove the proposals, create new ones and send reports to the companies.

EpA - A web cooperative editor for learning environments

EpA is a web cooperative editor for the web focused in lerning environments. Teachers can use EpA to publicize writing tasks to be done by their students. They also can evaluate group or individual activities during or after text composition, and the text itself.
Students so must use the EpA environment to discuss and write their texts in groups. The discussion can be made on-line or off-line. The idea behind EpA is that writing and discussing together, the students can learning better the issues in discussion.

Main Features

EpA 0.1 do EpA will deliver the following features:

1.management and evaluation of writing tasks.
2. text edition by paragraph, with conflicting editions being properly treated. done
3. discussions can be general or linked to specific paragraphs. 90% done
4. users and groups management.

Future versions must incorporate also:

1. intelligent support to authors and teachers.
2. EpA is being developed in jsp, using hibernate, log4j and mysql.
3. In near future, we will be accepting external collaborators, mainly researchers in Informatics in Education or developers interested in implementing internationalization

GHIN - Global Health Information Network

GHIN (Global Health Information Network) plan of action consists of two sequential main goals: 1.Information systems for clinicians 2.Interconnecting clinicians and patients. 1.Information systems for clinicians: Use of electronic health records (EHRs) can result in workflow efficiencies in clinicians' offices and higher quality of care for patients. Those who are using EHRs are considered pioneers among their peers. Introducing EHRs and other health information technology into a largely paper office, changes current office workflows. Much of it is change for the better.

An increasing number of studies have found that EHRs can result in positive patient-care outcomes, Accelerating the use of EHRs among clinicians requires that they are better informed about the benefits of incorporating greater technology into their practice and how it can benefit their patients 2. Interconnecting them: Patients' information should be portable and move with them from one point of care to another. The current practice of using separate paper files for one patient in multiple clinical settings is limiting and can compromise the quality of healthcare received.

Conversion to an EHR system is necessary but not sufficient to solve the portability problem. That's because each clinician or medical practice may purchase an EHR system from different vendors, which may not be compatible with one another. Unless EHR systems can communicate, they are simply islands of data where patient information does not flow seamlessly from one clinical setting to the next. Without clinicians' ability to exchange information with one another electronically, whether it is across town or across the country, patients' information may not be readily available when and where it is needed. To remedy this, an interoperable system based upon a common architecture must be developed. Patient records would then be available electronically virtually anywhere in the country.

The initiative behind the GHIN (Global Health Information Network) is to provide the Health care Information system, alternative to NHIN (National Health Information Network) efforts in the USA & NHS (National Health Service) Nationwide EMR initiative in the UK and achieve interoperability to the above Health Information Networks.
GHIN uses a combination of Java technologies like J2EE, Portlets, Java Destktop, Webservices and XML, J2ME, JXTA.

JAC - Vocabulary Trainer for Chinese

Jac is a vocabulary trainer for the Chinese written and spoken language. Jac holds for each vocabulary the translation, the Chinese character and the pinyin. This enables to query pinyin and the Chinese character at the same time which helps the user to learn the pronuncation in relation to the character and vice versa.

The level system keeps track of the users progress and minimizes the learn effort. The trainer is meant to be used on a daily basis. Every day 30 minutes up to one hour are sufficient. Pinyin can be entered very easily. Simply write something like "wo3men dou1 shi4 liu2xue2sheng1" and Jac converts it to the according Pinyin.

The learning progress is visualized by diagrams which gives the user a motivating feedback. Although I use this program every day I haven't finished it yet. The major features are available but I am still working on usability and the "fun factor".

kids - help kids to learn and use Java

This project is created to help kids to learn and use Java. A lot of kids are interested to learn Java, but often they have difficuty to find a good resource to get them started. This project is aimed to provide kids the starting pointer. The projects also helps kids to share their experience, lessons, tricks, projects, etc while they are learning and using Java.

nb-elearning - Elearning Portals

This project is used to developing Elearning services in Viet Nam.

Open Gradebook - Easy to use, non-intrusive open source grading system.

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 I will be using MySQL for development.

ufskart - Educational project through a virtual store.

It shows the use of diverse standards of development. The objective of the project is to teach as to create a complete system web, through a virtual store.

virtual-campus - Virtual-Campus will be a feature rich E-learning / P2P tool

Virtual-Campus is envisaged to be an effective E-Learning tool, offering a plethora of essential and value added features.
The project will be developed on a plug-in based Client-Server model, beginning with the bare essentials and enriching with supplementary features.
The product will support the following features to start with:-
At the server (Probably located at the Main Campus)

1. Live / On Demand video streaming (IP Multicast) of Lectures/Videos from the server.
2. Automatic recording and archiving of lectures and related media into the library.
3. Tracker for Bit Torrent(under consideration)
4. IRC server (proposed)

At the Client(Located with individual students or distant learning centers)


1. Recieve live broadcasts/demanded videos from the server.
2. P2P Video chat (Proposed).

3. File sharing via BitTorrent protocol. (We believe BitTorrent will be more efficient than FTP in this particular setting due to the inherent availability of a sizeable number of simultaneous peers. We plan to implement the API for BitTorrent ourselves).
4. IRC (Chat client - Proposed).
5. Maintain/Synchronize Time tables/schedules at the client.


In future, the functionality may be extended to include Teleconferencing, RSS feeds and other value additions. The tool will be developed on Java and will therefore be platform independent. 
Contribution The product will serve the cause of Distance Education and E-Learning which are rapidly emerging as a powerful medium for extending the reach of education to all nooks and corners especially in developing countries, by providing an cost effective utility.

webbrowser - All in One WebBrowser inclues various taste of different popular browser.

All in One WebBrowser inclues various taste of different popular browser.

sfsucsc868group1f05 - CSc868 Group 1 Coursework

This project is to help SFSU students learn good Software Engineering practices, Object Oriented Analysis, and Object Oriented Design. Our secondary goal is to gain familiarity with tools designed for and by Java developers. We intend to meet these goals by completing assignments under the guidance of Dr. Levine, professor at San Francisco State University.

The application is currently used in the classroom. As a part of the Lincoln mural project in Philadelphia, Greg Barton and his brother in law, set up five middle school art classrooms with Tilepile setups. (Two computers donated by IBM, tile racks and grids, and buckets 'o' tile.) The students use the system create tile square sections that will be included in the mural under the direction of volunteers from the Mural Arts program in Philly. Also look at this page on the Mural Arts site about the project, too.

Tell us a little about yourself (work background, hobbies, education, things we would be surprised to know).

I have an MS in computer science, focusing in artificial intelligence. I'm currently working as a GUI programmer for a small startup company based in Florida. My hobbies are playing the bass trombone and messing around with my open source projects. People would be surprised to know that I'm distantly related to the queen of England. I'd be surprised by that, too... :P

Are you a member of any Java user groups?

I'm a member of the Dallas area JavaMug and lead their Rules/AI special interest group.

Why did you start TilePile?

My brother in law is a muralist and needed some software to help him assemble a 30x300 foot glass tile mural. (Well over 1 million tiles.) Java to the rescue! :)

Tell us about the success of the project. Who is using it and how has it helped?

It is currently being used most heavily by my brother in law. One mural has been completed (the Barrio Anita mural in Tucson, AZ: http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/news/50846.php) and another is being constructed for the Constitution Center in Philadelphia as a part of their Lincoln exhibit.

Other artists in the Philadelphia area have used it to construct murals as well.

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

Currently it's stable. What it's lacking most now is good programmer and user documentation. Planned features for the immediate future include splitting off the data serving and station control functions into different servers, a servlet based mural data server, and integration with outside image editing software like Photoshop and GIMP.

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

Testing on Mac OSX, mainly. Also folks with experience optimizing Java2D performance would be nice. Finally, anyone who loves writing user docs. (Like that'll ever happen! :P )

Any suggestions for GELC or Java.net?

Keep up the good work, and give Dan a raise. :)

Take a look at the TilePile Project too and if you think it is cool as I do, look up your art teacher and send them Greg's way.

Here are a few images that show that the TilePile application is truly a work of art. Great job Greg!!!

g!

Lincoln mural

Lincoln mural with grid grouping overlay

Lincoln mural, excluding sections with out of stock tile colors

NOTE: All artwork copyright 2003-2005 Joshua Sarantitis

Project Names & Links: Cve - Cooperative Visual Environment Wippog Transition definition language for reactive systems Project Owner Names: Cve (Ventriglia) - Wippog ( paolodt, bottoni) City: Rome Country:Italy

I'm domenico ventriglia. I'm 33 years old. I'm project manager in a group that include the most important Italian newspaper. I work on managing of on-line service. I collaborate with computer science university department in Rome

As you may know, I do talks on Java. Have you talked at any Java conferences?

Yes, I was speaker in java Italian conference in Milan 1999 . Main conferences:

http://ftp.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/conf/vl/hcc2003.html
http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/v/Ventriglia:Domenico.html
http://www.dsmforum.org/events/DSVL02/Papers.html

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

Wippog is a resourse- based model called Wippog and a relative rule based language for multiset transformations. This is a general purpose engine and the key word is configuration. Use cases are: system configuration, human-computer interaction, error management and visual interaction management (cve project is a particular case).

Since your project is released, do you have any success stories?

Wippog project is used in many university projects (for example cve project). Wippog isn’t a commercial product but it shows in a practical way a innovative abstract model. It well work.

The Wippog is a language and a computation environment to express behaviour in reactive systems and heterogeneous components

The CVE (Cooperative Visual Environment) project is a software platform supporting the generation and the execution of visual interactive environments. Each environment is defined as a network of components of three types: Excutors, Observers and Presenters. In CVE, Executors are responsible for managing computational resources and activities, while Observers are responsible for formatting views to be displayed by Presenters. Moreover, the observers are able to interpret the events generated by the user on the presentation elements and to consequently generate requests to the executors, or adjust presentation aspects, according to the meaning of the event. A notification mechanism ensures that state changes in the executor are reported to the registered observers to update their presentations. Actually, we defined environments able to manage visual sentences (graphic editors). In this context we have implemented independent software components to manage generic graphic relations, user interaction and Finite-State Machines.

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

Wippog is included in several university projects. This month we have closed some bugs and we have improved gui interface. In the last month no new bug have been indicated.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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

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.