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http://blogs.sun.com/lou/date/20060421 Friday April 21, 2006

Discovering the Aquarium, A GlassFish Community

A community is a place where people come to discuss like interests, meet new friends, and support one another. On My Sun Connection, we actively promote online communities by featuring discussions on the Sun Developer Network, a buzzing, thriving site where Sun engineers contribute daily.

We're always on the lookout for new communities of folks using Sun products and technologies, and we've discovered a beauty — The Aquarium.

Based on GlassFish, a free, open source application server using Java technology, the Aquarium is a group blog, with writing and editing duties shared by several contributors.

The Aquarium is a great place to learn about:

User tagging, or folksonomy, where normal human beings get decide how to label and organize things, is popular on The Aquarium. The site is updated regularly with new entries, with tags you can use to explore topics and learn something new and different.

The site claims it has "nothing to do with fish." That may be so, but I'm sure many developers will be easily "hooked" by all the useful tutorials, tips, downloads and stories found on The Aquarium.



Posted by lou [Community] ( April 21, 2006 05:12 PM ) Permalink
Comments:

Thanks for your nice words, Lou. I didn't know about MySunConnection. It looks good; work to do, as always, but very much a step in the right direction. I played a bit with it, logged in, didn't see anything, went to do a new download (SJS AS 9.0 beta), then saw all my download info from SDN (a walk down memory lane). It seemed I had to do a new download to kick in my old history; it may have been a mistake on my part, or a bug perhaps? - eduard/o

Posted by Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart on April 22, 2006 at 07:56 AM MDT #

Here is another question. How would TheAquarium be triggered as a blog? I was expecting it to show after downloading the Java EE 5 SDK beta, but it didn't. Is there a way I can configure what blogs I see? Thanks, - eduard/o

Posted by Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart on April 22, 2006 at 07:59 AM MDT #

Hi Eduardo,

You're correct — the default view for My Sun Connection is empty, until you download the software you want via the Solaris Enterprise System Get It page.

This triggers the provisioning of the portal with software selections, and as you discovered, enables you to view your previous downloads.

We realize this provisioning method is less than ideal, since it does not account for folks who obtained Sun software using other means, such as eval CDs provided by a Sun sales rep or partner. We're working on a fix, and in the meantime, there is a somewhat kludgy workaround available.

Blogs - we run a keyword search based on the product name on blogs.sun.com, and display the relevant matches. This method is less than ideal, because we can miss important blogs that don't necessarily match product keywords, such as The Aquarium.

What really makes sense is to link in the blogs using metadata, such as user tags. By following the tags for a product, instead of keyword instances, we could do better job of promoting content that is timely, relevant, and useful.

Thanks for the comments and feedback, and kudos to you and the team for the success of The Aquarium.

Posted by Lou Ordorica on April 24, 2006 at 11:42 AM MDT #

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