The Kitchen Sink Weblog: Tales from Sun's internet facing edge

One of the reasons I named this blog KitchenSink is because the demo I've been writing about has a splash screen that shows a kitchen sink with silverware in it. The impression that you are supposed to get from the splash screen, is that this tool is a useful utility. You'll have to let us know if you "got it".

Project Alameda is not a product, it's an idea. We are showing it at JavaOne to get feedback about the direction it should take. Should it be a full featured consumer tool? Should we align it with JDS and have it feature a Java application catalog? Should we provide it as an SDK? We've put together four channels as a talking point.

There's a lot of interesting activity in this "rich clients that aggregate/parse the web" space. Mac enthusiasts know about Watson. For those of you that are corporate marketing news junkies, check out Rocket Desktop. A fellow Sun blogger, richb is looking for a RSS aggregator. There is definitely a need here, the browser doesn't always cut it and it's hard to find things on the web. Although if you are just looking for a RSS aggregator there are some browser based solutions (extension to Firefox).

Above is a sneak preview of one of the channels. It uses the Amazon APIs to present the Amazon products in a hierachy that you can browse, check out the prices and the reviews.

Come by the Swing and Java 2D pods to check it out and let us know what you think.

BTW, sorry for the change in looks again, sotto took up too much real estate

I'm switching to Sotto, the other theme seemed to have some formatting wierdness. Not my favorite theme, but if it is good enough for Will and Danese it's good enough for me.

Today I'm wearing my QA hat. While testing out the search function in the demo (aka Project Alameda) we are building for JavaOne, I found The Kitchen Sink Language. I'm assuming this guy is not serious, mixing functional and object oriented programming like that. Getting on my soapbox for a moment, I think the choice of technology rarely completely breaks the project, its getting the requirements right in the first place that really counts. The problem is that non-techies seem not be able to visualize how a software application might work nor do they think in linear, decision tree fashion. So what you do, build prototypes, maybe more than one, and feel free to throw it away and change the platform/language underneath if you think it's needed. I will say however, that the choice of technology (not to mention a decent architecture) often becomes more important the longer lived the thing is. It's a often lot easier to get something out the door than to maintain and enhance it well. Or maybe that's just my perspective, since I seem to end up keeping someone's opus functional. Off soapbox.

Lots of JavaOne buzz and activity. I'm working mainly from home this week (I'm one of those "flex" employees) and I'm even catching it from here. I talked to Tony (his blog) that is helping out, they are doing the heavy lifting today and getting all the machines into the pods. You've probably caught this elsewhere but check out: Java bloggers at Thirsty Bear. Thirsty Bear is a favorite watering hole, decent beer and great tapas, too bad I have a previous commitment. Also check out the Looking Glass Community meeting, no badge needed for entry.