The killer app on J2ME technology-enabled devices will still be games for the near-term. They will start to get more advanced as wireless gaming companies merge and acquire each other. More multiplayer online connectivity and better/faster graphics will keep the gaming industry growing. The battlefront will be Europe (and Japan) where more people ride trains instead of driving cars allowing quick snippets of focused-time on cell phone games.

See:

J2ME Gaming Companies Converging (especially in Europe)

Watch in 2005 as the next generation of J2ME games roll-out and wow customers.

NOTE: I'll be off on holiday next week. Hope everyone has a great holiday! See you all in 2005!

Here's a nice smartphone from BenQ. It's their P50 PDA/cell phone combo device with J2ME MIDP 2.0 pre-installed. It's also got Windows Mobile Edition 2003 as its native OS, but of course not everything in this world is perfect. ;-)

See:

BenQ P50: J2ME MIDP 2.0 device

The reviewers have been saying it's much better than the PalmOne Treo 650, plus about $150 cheaper. Of course it still remains to be seen since it is not out yet. :-) Sign up now if you want to pre-order it, though.

In-fusio has released a new J2ME technology MIDlet called, Zoo Tycoon 2 Mobile. It allows you to create, oversee and maintain a zoo and all the animals right from a cell phone.

See:

Zoo Tycoon 2 Mobile on J2ME technology

The cool part is that it has tie-ins with the PC version of the game (from Micro$oft of all places!) which allows you to unlock parts of the PC game with info from the J2ME mobile version of the game.

More tie-ins of PC with J2ME cell phones will continue in the future. It's a natural progression.

WRAL, a local TV station in North Carolina will start delivering TV news content to J2ME cell phones using the NOW app from Air2Web. Sprint PCS users in North Carolina will start to get news stories, digital photos, traffic web cam updates, weather radar images, and weather warnings all wirelessly transmitted to their J2ME technology-enabled phones.

See:

WRAL TV content on a J2ME phone

Who needs to watch TV anymore? Just watch your phone... yeah, with a magnifying glass, but it's still pretty cool stuff. ;-)

Are you scurrying around to get in that last minute gift for a J2ME technology geek? Well, here's the perfect list for you I created over at Amazon:

See:

Holiday Gift List of J2ME phones

Any one of those J2ME phones from my list would be the perfect stocking stuffer for the Java-on-a-cell-phone-lover... and you can take it out of the box first and activate it. But, remember to put it on vibrate-only or you'll ruin the surprise. ;-)

This J2ME game called Rayman 3 from Gameloft has been out for a while, but is worth mentioning. It has very good animation and shows the power of J2ME graphics on a cell phone.

See:

J2ME game: Rayman 3

Good as a gift for someone with a J2ME cell phone... Or, for yourself. Heck, you've earned it. ;-)

Ah, just in time for the Christmas season. A nice tree decorating J2ME app for your cell phone.

See:

J2ME Christmas tree decorating game

I like the description of this game! :-) It's got all those blinky lights und shiny tinsel. Ja! Wundervoller tannenbaum!

Now, I've seen everything! Here's a Tamagotchi-like virtual pet dog for your J2ME cell phone.

See:

Pebbles, the J2ME dog

I've got one question: Does it poop virtual dog doo? :-)

As I've posted before, if you want the best Open Source IDE for J2ME development, it's NetBeans 4.0 which has been officially released with full J2ME WTK 2.2 support. It's also good for that other lesser-known Java development platform (J2SE, 5.0 Tiger) :-)

See:

NetBeans 4.0 announcement

Personally, I like XEmacs to use as a cross-platform editor/IDE for J2ME development, but NetBeans 4.0 is actually good if you want a more user-friendly environment.

Here's a good article on integrating J2ME and Bluetooth. You can also see more at the JCP JSR 82

See:

How-To Article on J2ME and Bluetooth

Now that's a good article as long as hacker's don't use it to figure out a better way of doing Blue-jacking! ;-)

Jon and Bruce brought up Bouncy Castle in the comments of my last post. This is a good time to cover what it is for those who don't know.

See:

The Legion of the Bouncy Castle

Don't let the funny name throw you! Bouncy castles are those inflatible tent things that kids have at birthday parties that they jump around in until they vomit.

The Bouncy Castle that Jon and Bruce talk about is the Open Source Freeware that adds cryptography to Java. They also have a cryptography package that runs on J2ME technology and in a proper manner using their own org.bouncycastle.* API namespace (unlike what IBM is trying to do before the proper JSR comes out: 219).

JSR 219 J2ME Security Optional Package JCE coming out next year will be the standard for J2ME CDC-based cryptography and good for upward compatibility of the standard JCE APIs from J2ME to J2SE. If you don't want to use the standard JCE, you can also use Bouncy Castle since there is no licensing or namespace conflict with JSR 219, but make sure to read their Freeware License first to see if that's suited for your case or if you'd rather have the standard JCE from Sun.

Hold the phone, IBM!

In a recent article by IBM, they show how they put the J2SE Java Cryptography Extension (JCE) APIs on top of J2ME Foundation Profile. No can do, IBM! (Not yet, at least until JSR 219 is finalized).

See:

IBM How-To Article

If you are a J2ME licensee, it doesn't mean you can grab any J2SE API (within class files or JAR files) meaning any java.* and/or javax.* namespace class files, wily-nily and run them on a J2ME platform. J2SE and J2ME require two different licenses and one does not mean you are entitled to the APIs of the other.

Their mistake is assuming you can expose javax.crypto.* APIs (JCE) on a J2ME Foundation Profile 1.0 platform. You can expose all the com.ibm.* APIs you want, IBM, but not java.* or in particular javax.crypto.* APIs (until JSR 219 is finalized).

To use JCE on J2ME Foundation Profile, you have to wait until J2ME Foundation Profile 1.1 and J2ME Security Optional Package is released, which properly defines JSSE/JCE/JAAS for J2ME Foundation Profile 1.1. That's the rule.

See: JSR 219

Maybe some Sun lawyers should remind IBMers about this rule... :-)

Siemens has come up with a device that is a sensor and a mobile communicator all in one. So, you can set it up as an infrared motion detector that contacts your cell phone via SMS text messaging or calls a phone number with a prerecorded voice message when it detects an intruder.

See:

Mobile Alarm System and Baby Phone

Some day it will also have a camera. It can be controlled via Java app over the Web. Nice! Write once, sense everywhere!

Reliance Infocomm has come up with a J2ME app that coverts text to speech for the visually impaired to be able to use a cell phone.

See:

New J2ME app for text-to-speech

Nice technology to open a new market.

Here's a blog post with a comment from NTT DoCoMo why they do not like Microsoft powered cell phones. I like how the blogger talks about .NET programs burned into ROM being incredibly small. Hello? J2ME ROMization of MIDlets invented interpetted code and perfected the Virtual Machine and small bytecode class files for cell phones! Microsoft always thinks they invented everything.

See:

Blog post about NTT DoCoMo and Windows

Microsoft defenders are so darn arrogant. :-)