Innovation Blog

Today's mantra in entertainment is “the consumer is king” whereas historically, that mantra was “content is king.” Consumers today are demanding any content, any time, any place, on any device, and in any format, creating a paramount shift for content providers. Different device types require different content types and data rates, thus massive amounts of transcoding, processing, and storage.

Add to that the moving, tracking, and storing of content as it goes through its life cycle and you'll see tremendous pressure on the IO systems, networking systems, storage systems, and CPUs. With multiple forms of distribution, from traditional TV, to video-on-demand, to the Internet, to YouTube, iPods, and cellphones, the need to manage these digital formats is dire.

This latest edition Innovating@Sun brings together host Hal Stern, vice president of global systems engineering and guests Bob Sokol, media architect in global sales and services, and Dave Cavena (photo), systems engineer in the studio and postproduction part of Sun's business. The trio discuss the latest innovation in the area of digital media with particular focus on:

If you're the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) type, fun is guaranteed at the 2007 Maker Faire in San Mateo, CA. This family-friendly event features everything - from arts and crafts to science projects and engineering, including robots, and even a "Silicon Death Valley", a graveyard of obsolete computer gear.

The Sun Microsystems booth is showing off with Sun SPOT - a platform that greatly simplifies Java development and experimentation with small wireless devices. Many visitors are absolutely mesmerized by the "gadgets" powered by Sun SPOTs, including Robot Sapiens, the Sun SPOT Trackbots, a Sun SPOT-based Morse code to semiphore translator. A true feast for geeks of all ages!

If you're interested in "programming the world", you can get the Sun SPOT Java Development Kit directly on the Sun SPOT website.

As a developer, wouldn't you love to stop thinking about time and start thinking about how you're optimizing your workload or responding to events? Wouldn't you love for someone to abstract all the nasty stuff underneath the APIs to allow you to think about the domain and application workload?

The Java Real-Time System 2.0, announced at JavaOne, does just that, offering real-time garbage collection and support for x86. Distinguished Engineer in the Client Software Group, Greg Bollella, joins Vice President of Global Systems Engineering, Hal Stern, for the latest edition of Innovating@Sun.

Stern and Bollella discuss:

If you were not able to come in person to see the Sun Labs Open House 2007 at our Menlo Park Campus, check out the Sun Labs Virtual Tour and the great interviews with some of our best researchers.