When Java came to life in 1995, the web went from an endless series of hyperlinks to a platform that delivered live content. Which is exactly why Java is on more than a billion computers in the world today. And it's cuz of those billion computers that we keep innovating in JDK 7 for the desktop and Java EE for the enterprise.

But it's 2009 and almost a third of Internet access today is through mobile devices. And the percentage of mobile Internet users is expected to surpass those using traditional computers in the next few years! So while the desktop, laptop, and enterprise computer remain important, there are so many new ways to access content on the web. And they were all on display at JavaOne, running the same apps across smartphones, smartbooks, netbooks, e-books, set-top boxes, TVs. So basically any device you chose can now run the same application! Check out Eric's keynote for the full story.

But there are two other key pieces to the Java story this year: first Nandini showed the JavaFX authoring tool which lets you create graphical applications easily, and then you can send the app directly to a whole bunch of devices simultaneously. And last but not least - the Java Store - the key to distribution for developers. Cuz if Java's gonna run on everything around us, and more and more developers are gonna write interesting apps for all those devices using the new tools, we're all gonna be looking for a handy way to get ahold of those apps.

Graduation is about accomplishment, but it's also about potential. So congrats to Java and the whole team (including Jeet, my charm school buddy Octavian, Eric, and the JavaOne peeps: Ash, Lizzi, Kim, Jen, Heidi...). And here's looking forward to seeing Java everywhere. The potential is unlimited!

Yesterday Sun sponsored an employee event in-world. I'll admit I was a skeptic, but sitting in a virtual theater with co-worker avatars is MUCH better than listening to a meeting on a phone. I hung out with friends from all sorts of real-life locales, and was able to fidget and change seats throughout the day. The talks were all great - with a focus on Sun strategy and interesting speakers from across the company.

Ya know how companies typically sponsor parties at the end of a long event? Last night I teleported into Club Java, where I was promptly animated into a great dancer by our Second Life staffers. I'm the redhead on the right, Doreen is in the middle and Lizzi is dancing up a storm in the back.

Who said I couldn't dance?

Signed, AmyO... Later

On Friday I saw a preview of the JavaOne event floor - and it's gonna be awesome! Demos, displays, Java playgrounds, village, living rooms - the community has delivered some incredible innovations this year. So if you haven't yet, make sure to register this week. See you there for the fun!

How do you expand your business beyond existing customers and traditional revenue opportunities? Take the Red Sox for example. Fenway Park seats just under 40,000 fans and the Red Sox have sold out every home game since May 2003. But with the highest ticket prices in the majors, there's just no room for price uplift to help revenue. So the Sox launched a number of businesses that leverage their baseball success into other areas: services like FanFoto, added value product like post-game concerts that in turn sell more food and merchandise, consulting to businesses that want to market through sports, online ads, and travel packages with the team to away-game destinations.

All around us new business models are maximizing economic value. I often get asked why we open source our software at Sun, and how we can possibly make money doing that. Well, developers that use our software platforms (e.g.; OpenSolaris, Java, NetBeans, MySQL) can innovate in their applications without worrying about the scalability, reliability, and flexibility of the underlying platform. And open sourcing those platforms expands our reach to developers who don't have the funds to pay steep software licenses.

The number of people using our software increases each and every day. But we all learned at a young age that zero times a large number is still zero, so how do we make money when we give away our core software intellectual property?

Our business model today delivers support and managed services, added value products, servers, storage and consulting to empower open source deployers as they grow their businesses at Web scale. Value-added businesses that surround and enhance the open source experience. Ya know, not all that different from what the Red Sox are doing with their Fenway Sports Group business.

It was all sweet at JavaOne this week... JavaFX, OpenJDK , Java SE , Java Devices, Java games, Java shirts, Java everything. But who would have expected a Java storage system, with built-in search and a Java API? A Java storage system with an open source community?

This is a first for us at JavaOne. Our Honeycomb fixed content system has Java APIs (C too), so that an application developer can easily structure how they want to store and search massive amounts of data. And we're using OpenSolaris and other open source communities to help further define these APIs. We also gave out the Honeycomb SDK on these cute memory sticks at JavaOne.

Our developers are busy working to release source code for the initial Honeycomb client and server implementation. We're targeting Fall 2007 for that, so there's lots going on and lots more to come. Meanwhile, join our Honeycomb development team in the OpenSolaris community for some good discussions about where we should be taking the Java API for this project.