Happy Halloween! 1001players.com has free scary games for your Java ME cell phone at their Web site for download.

See:

Free Halloween Games

Here's a quote:

 To celebrate the most frightening 
 night of the year, 1001players.com 
 presents its spookiest games: 
 whether it deals with visiting 
 mysterious castles or escaping 
 from ghosts, players will thrill 
 with their handset as never before! 
 A dozen titles are available 
 covering different genres such as 
 arcade, platform or RPG

Hinkmond

The magical fruit: NetBeans 5.5 is here, with better Mobile Device Development support and Subversion integration. Nice. :-)

See:

Take that Eclipse! See what we have released... Fff-tftffft-p!

Here's a quote:

 NetBeans competes primarily with 
 Eclipse, the dominant IDE for 
 Java development. Sun's expanded 
 NetBeans partner program is 
 aimed at expanding the NetBeans 
 ecosystem by spotlighting the 
 partners working there.

Hinkmond

Place yer bets... Place yer bets, please -- on which will come out first: Open Source of Java SE or Open Source of Java ME. My money is on Java ME technology open sourcing (or is it opening source???) first. But... I have insider information. So, I can't bet. :-)

See:

Java SE will open source in 30 to 60 days

Here's a quote:

 Picking up the pace after somewhat 
 of a piecemeal approach to open 
 sourcing the Java programming 
 language over the last several 
 months, Sun Microsystems Chief 
 Executive Officer Jonathan 
 Schwartz said the company will 
 open the core Java code to the 
 community by year's end.

Hinkmond

Fastap has 26 additional tiny alpha keys (instead of just the normal 10-key alpha-num combo buttons) on cell phone keypad. It's on Nokia E70 graymarket phones for the U.S.

See:

Squished-up, Mashed-up keypad on Java ME cell phones

Here's a quote:

 The Fastap keyboard from Digit 
 Wireless offers a surprising 
 new twist: The letters appear 
 on 26 small raised buttons 
 positioned at every corner 
 between the standard keys.
 The letters are placed in 
 alphabetical order rather 
 than the "QWERTY" layout

But, you can't touchtype on one of those little buggers anyway so it doesn't make much difference I guess.

Hinkmond

Here's a San Hoser Murky News article about how Java ME cell phones in the future will be able to tell your preferences and give you advice based on what you do with your cell phone.

See:

Java ME on your cell phone will advise you

Here's a quote:

 Technologists need to pay special 
 attention to the interfaces 
 whenever a machine starts 
 advising humans what to do, Beck 
 said.

 "There was a while when new cars 
 had little voices that announced 
 when your door wasn't closed or 
 your seat belt was unbuckled,"
 he said. "The car companies 
 found out people didn't like 
 being scolded by a voice..."

Or, maybe a Java ME app on your cell phone that notices your calling patterns and gently nudges, "Hasn't it been a while since you called your mom?" Or, someday when there are RFID tags everywhere like on your billfold then the RFID reader on your Java ME cell phone can tell you, "Look out buddy, that guy behind you is lifting your wallet!"

Hinkmond

Over here at the Santa Clara campus, we've been trying to figure out who left a big rusting dumpster in the middle of our parking lot. It's a big black steel container parked across 3 parking spots with the Sun logo on it. D'oh! It's not a dumpster for our on-going Santa Clara campus construction??? It's a marketing stunt from Sun called Project Blackbox??? OMG, I believe they have all lost their minds over there in our server division.

See:

Someone left a big dumpster in our parking lot

Here's a quote from Tim Bray:

 Me, I have no idea how big 
 the market is. But I’m glad 
 we built it, because it is 
 just totally drop-dead 
 f***ing cool.

I'm thinking the engineers over here in Java Micro Edition just will never understand our big iron Sun brothers: Their boxes are a lot bigger than ours and they have potty mouths. ;-)

Hinkmond

Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm, who's real claim-to-fame is that he's the son of ultra-rich dude, Irwin Jacobs (ex-CEO of Qualcomm) is trying to step out from Daddy's shadow with his own visions of the BREW cell phones of tomorrow. Trouble is that Java ME technology will be there to take it all away from Qualcomm and give to the open source developer's community instead. >:-) Oh, well... Just like Robin Hood. Welcome to Sherwood Forest!

See:

Here's what Java ME technology will buy you

Here's a quote:

 HEALTH AND FITNESS: Tiny sensors 
 will be able to monitor your 
 heart rate, which your cell can 
 then automatically send 
 wirelessly to your doctor or 
 personal trainer.

Hinkmond

The T-Mobile Dash is yet another SmartPhone (YASP) launched to end world hunger and come up with the grand unified theory, just like the Palm Treo, Motorola Q, and BlackBerry Pearl are supposed to do.

See:

Yet another SmartPhone

Here's a quote:

 "Mobile Internet Explorer handles 
 complicated and graphically rich 
 pages well...but stumbles when it 
 comes to JAVA- and AJAX-heavy 
 sites, such as YouTube."

Hinkmond

UIQ3 (native UI toolkit) on phones like the Sony Ericsson W950 have interesting apps, and all can be rewritten in Java ME technology.

See:

UIQ vs. Java ME

Here's a quote:

 There are currently more than 150 UIQ3 
 and Java ME based applications 
 available for download from the Sony 
 Ericsson Application Shop, all Symbian 
 Signed and Java Verified so that 
 consumers can safely download and 
 install them knowing that they have 
 been tested by an independent test 
 house according to industry-agreed 
 testing and certification criteria.

Hinkmond

G'day, mate. Digital Chocolate in Australia is ramping up their Java ME product line with mathematical and memory games for cell phones.

See:

Brain Games

Here's a quote:

 Digital Chocolate will today 
 announce the first in a series 
 of Brain Juice games, which 
 rather than traditional 
 gameplay, offer mathematical 
 and memory exercises - a genre 
 pioneered earlier this year 
 by Nintendo's Brain Training 
 titles for its DS handheld.

Hinkmond

Xing Mobile has just released a game called Fish Farm for your Java ME technology-enabled cell phone.

See:

Fish heads, fish heads, roly poly Java ME fish heads...

Here's a quote:

 This game will put your 
 reflexes and planning skills 
 to the test as a prospering 
 fish farm can turn into a 
 watery grave in the blink 
 of an eye if the Barracuda 
 gets his way... Xing Fish 
 Farm runs on all MIDP-2 
 phones with a 176x208 
 screen size.

Hinkmond

I went native last night to observe the Open Source community in preparation for when Java ME technology goes open source. I met Matt Hamrick, who runs the Homebrew Mobile Phone Club. They had their monthly meeting last night at the TechShop in Menlo Park, Calif. where Matt Ettus gave a cool demo of his Software Radio technology and our OpenSPARC guys (Shrenik Mehta, Raju Joshi, and Steve Rudinsky) from Sun gave a talk on the OpenSPARC technology.

I tagged along to give any needed pre-launch info about our Java ME software going open source by the end of this year, in support of the OpenSPARC talk that Steve and Shrenik presented.

See:

Homebrew Mobile Phone Club Monthly Meeting

Matt Ettus in one part of his demo showed something cool that he told us in the audience we cannot blog about. Well, one thing I can tell you about that part of the demo is that we should be glad that the FBI and the NSA are probably keeping a close eye on Matt's technology. ;-)

OpenSPARC technology looks very cool too. Seeing our Sun CPU h/w out there under GPL is pretty different (scary!), but that is the direction that Sun is heading: opening all our technology to the open source community. Anyone can take our SPARC chip and put it in their homebrew computer or even homebrew cell phone or heck, build their own 1,000 CPU grid computer. It's getting lots of attention.

That's why we're also open sourcing our Java ME technology. Matt Hamrick says some Homebrew Mobile Phone Club guys like Python for their Open Phone since Java ME is not OSI-defined open sourced (yet!). But, we will be soon, so you Python guys should hold up and check out the entire Java ME software stack when it goes truly open source. There are lots more APIs in Java ME that can access the phone's functionality via our established open standards. Hopefully, we can work closely with the Homebrew Mobile Phone Club guys, since I think they will gain a lot when we open source our software. And, it will be free (as in homebrew beer and as in speech). :o)

Hinkmond

Here's a project that I'm working on (with help from Alexey Semenyuk) here at Sun teamed up with very good engineers over at Laszlo Systems (Adam, Jim, and Ben): the OpenLaszlo Java ME viewer project called Orbit. The project runs OpenLaszlo apps on top of a Java ME platform.

See:

Play it again, Sam: Laszlo partners up

In Casablanca, Victor Laszlo is a Czech resistance leader stuck in Casablanca who must partner with Rick Blaine, owner of Rick's American Cafe to fight the Nazis. What happens when Laszlo teams up? I can't tell you, but it is sure to make the Nazis mad. ;-)

Hinkmond

Vampent has a Nintendo emulator for your Java ME technology-enabled cell phone. Now you can play all those great classic old Nintendo games on your mobile phone.

See:

Get a Nintendo emulator for your Java ME phone

Here's a quote:

 vNes is a NES emulator for mobiles. 
 It lets you play Nintendo 8-bits 
 games on your mobile.  You can put 
 games from thousands of roms in 
 your pocket, play them anytime 
 and anywhere...  You can download 
 vNes J2ME 1.2... freely now. 

Hinkmond

This looks like a fun Java ME game for your cell phone from Xing, International where you zoom around Indonesia. It's like the Fast and the Furious on methamphetamine... in the middle of an Asian urban city instead of LA... fully caffeinated on Mocha Java...

See:

Driving Miss Diah Permata Megawati Setiawati Soekarnoputri

Here's a quote:

 Xing International Asia the mobile 
 division of the company announces 
 the J2ME version of "Jakarta 
 Motorcross Challenge".  In this 
 game you race the crowded streets 
 of the Indonesian capital and 
 try to set a speed record. 

Hinkmond