Van Riper's Blog

January 2008 Archives

Android Talk by Dick Wall in Silicon Valley on February 6th

There is a new user group in Silicon Valley and it is not a JUG. It is a GTUG (Google Technology User Group). The Silicon Valley GTUG meets on the first Wednesday of the month at the GooglePlex in Mountain View, California. The topic of the February meeting is the Android Platform with Dick Wall, Java Champion and Google Developer Advocate, as the main speaker. Android code doesn't run on the JVM. So, why am I posting this on java.net? I think Ed Burnette gets it right in this ZDNet blog post when he says:

“The Open Handset Alliance doesn’t call Android “Java”, but programmers like myself, who don’t care so much for legal hair-splitting, do. I also call facial tissues regardless of who made them “Kleenex”, and I tell people to “Google” things on the internet. So sue me. Um, not really, that’s a joke.”

If you want to get beyond the Android FUD, I recommend reading all the Android articles on Ed's ZDNet blog. If you haven't seen it already, Stefano Mazzocchi’s article on how Dalvik skirts around the Java ME licensing restrictions is also worth a quick read.

In my mind, Android development is Java Development for all practical purposes. So, it makes perfect sense to have a Java Champion and a member of the Java Posse giving this talk. At this point, I should disclose that in addition to leading the Silicon Valley Web Developer JUG, I am also one of the leaders of the recently formed Silicon Valley GTUG. Many of our GTUG meetings will have a major Java component like this upcoming Android talk on February 6th does.

Dick Wall will give an introductory Android Platform talk during the first half of the meeting. In the second half of the meeting, Dick will answer technical questions raised within the Android Platform breakout session. If you plan to attend the Android technical breakout session, it is recommended that you download and spend some time with the Android SDK prior to the meeting. There will be other technical breakout sessions on OpenSocial, Google Web Toolkit, Google Maps/Earth, etc... based upon attendee interest during the second half of this meeting.

Although this is a free event, we will be limiting attendance to the first 200 people to register in advance online.

That's All Folks!

Java User Groups International Map

With the help of several other JUG Leaders, I have put together a world map of Java User Group (JUG) locations. It is setup as a KML map file that can be loaded into Google Maps or Google Earth. With my help, Aaron Houston put together a similar world map for Java Champion locations. Through the beauty of KML Network Links, we were able to easily combine the two maps with no duplication of map data. Aaron and I made a presentation on these two map projects during a Quickie session at the recent JavaPolis conference. Here is an embedded version of our slides from that session:

Either map works quite well in Google Maps. You can zoom in on them by continent and/or by country using the navigation structure of nested folders defined for each map. For the combined map, I highly recommend loading the main KML file into Google Earth. Last time I checked, Google Maps is still unable to process all the data of the combined map properly. It only partially loads the combined map. Google Earth has no such problems and the interactive support for zooming and viewing overlapping locations works really well in Google Earth. Besides, Google Earth is just way more fun to explore with this data (see 240K full size screen capture)

I'll end with a plea to get more JUGs onto the map. The bulk of the JUGs on the current map represent JUGs with Leaders that are active on the JUG Leaders mailing list. That list has been the main communication vehicle to get the word out about the map and to get the data back for new JUGs to add to the map. Although I highly recommend it, it is not a requirement to participate on the JUG Leaders mailing list in order to get your JUG onto the map. You will find instructions on what to submit and where to submit it on the JUGs wiki.

That's All Folks!

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