Explicitly and without apology a marketing vehicle MaryMaryQuiteContrary

we seem to be experiencing serious technical issues with the blog. apologies for disabling comments. soembody named bong@yahoo.com has decided to spam me. aggressively. repeatedly. which seriously annoys me. consider yourself black listed on the free stuff Mr. bong@yahoo.com. more appologies if you're going to the blog and getting an error message that asks you if you want to debug. we got tons of issues. so we're going to call it from here in Prague. I'm going to go out and finish "covering the story" and you'll get the full de-brief when I land back home in the US. the big take-aways: download NetBeans 4.0 today. :-) mary

So the excitement around the launch is palatable.

The engineers are totally jazzed.

NetBeans 4.0!

Everybody's excited.

Why?

Let me count the ways.

1. The first free open source IDE to support J2SE 5.0. Tiger, Tiger burning bright.

2. Tomcat built right in. So if Tiger didn't get your heart racing, Tomcat will.

3. First IDE based entirely on Apache Ant.

4. It's in there: expanded support for J2EE, J2ME. That means you could debug code on your phone, people. (Caution:  Debuging on your phone could be considered geek-a-zoid behavior.)

Party's getting started, everybody. Big Release/Holiday party.

I've got the camera.

Gotta go.

mary

The sun is actually peeking through the clouds.

I took a picture to prove it.

Haven't seen any sunshine the whole time I've been here.

None.

So I'm really excited by this latest development.

mary

Time to look at the morning papers, everybody!

Let's see... InfoWorld talked about how we "unleashed" NetBeans

We got picked up in ComputerWire

We've got a little diddy in O'Reilly

Over at VNUNet they use the words "monumental milestone" which they attribute to Sun in quotes and mockingly call us modest for tooting the old horn just a little too loud for their taste. apparently. .

CNET covered the launch. So did TechWeb. And CRN. And Internetnews.com.

mary

So here in Sun's Prague office I have had the pleasure of sitting next to Karel. Who said that I could use the Sun Ray next to him while I'm out here.

Because as we all know I am Sun Ray Girl. And I do not lug around hardware, cables and peripherals when I a travel.

Because that's as sensible as carrying around a TV so that I can watch it in my hotel room.

Anyway, want to introduce you to Karel.

That's Karel on the left. He's talking to Rob Lowe, who was also in Prague while I was there.

Totally good guys. Both of them. Just a quick snapshot of some of the friends I made in Prague.

mary

Prague is the most breathtaking city I have ever visited.

It is absoultely spectacular.

If the beauty of this place doesn't bring a tear to your eye, the cold will.

Today's forecast high: -5 C

mary

I got lots of techno celeb sightings going on over here, people.

We'll do a big photo-gallery wrap-up soon.

Meanwhile, gotta tell you about a total score.

So I managed to get techno celeb extraordinaire Jiri (I call him Jirka, though I didn't ask for permission to do that) Mzourek to sit down and talk to me.

See, Jirka's your regular Mr. Big when it comes to User Interface design. And he's got this project going on the side. It's one of your community-minded-contributes-to-the-good-karma-of-the-universe projects.

I found out about it from my colleague and close personal friend who we call "Rhodes Klement" in the blog because we want to protect his identity. "Rhodes" got perfect scores on the SAT, just to throw in a little factoid in case you're trying to unravel "Rhodes" identity.

So "Rhodes" told me how Jirka and his team helped get this lab donated to Czech Technical University. It's a state-of-the-art facility with equipment donated from Sun for testing the useability iinterface of software applications. Get this -- it's the only one of its kind in all of Eastern Europe. So that's really hot. Wait, there's more... Jiri and his team are mentoring these guys. We're talking about educating the next generation of techno celebs in principals of Human Computer Interaction. It's about teaching engineers and developers usibility interface design. They'd be doing stuff like making software accessible to users with disabilities. All kinds of facets of usibility. These students now have a state-of-the-art facility to learn and explore.

huge, huge, huge.

pop quiz: What do Jirka Mzourek and I have in common?

a: we're both Sun employees.

:-)

anyway, so in a total score of a move, I get this guy to sit down and talk to me. he was clearly very busy but i got him to just real quick answer some questions (while i took pictures)

Here is a transcript of our interview.

Q: Jirka, so good to meet  you. So I heard you guys have this whole thing set up at Czech Technical University. And that these students now have access to this super high-tech lab that is the only one of its kind in the region. And that you guys totally hook these people up by going over there and teaching them about how user interface issues are applied in commercial apps and all that. So that's super exciting, isn't it?

A: Yes.

Q: Right. Well, then the other thing, Jirka, is that I got wind of the fact that when you guys did the opening of this last month that the Minster of IT for the Czech Republic came and cut the ribbon at the opening. Which was really an ethernet cable. Very clever. Really impressed the marketing girl inside me, Jirka. Anyway, so Karel was telling me that the opening of the lab was a huge big deal because the Minister was there and all the press entourage and you guys were all over the place in the newspapers and on TV and all that. How terribly exciting. So did you get to be on TV, Jirka? Did you?

A: No.

(this is the part where his mobile phone beeped. totally understandable -- techno celeb. he's done with the phone and i'm getting visual clues that he's ready to conclude the interview.)

 

Q: So Jirka, in conclusion -- because I did promise I'd be brief -- this whole lab thing. So I heard it's the catalyst for a whole program, a curriculum around Usability Interface at the University with is not just a first for the county, it's a first for the whole region. A new generation of technologist are going to schooled in the art of technology innovation and usability is going to be at the foundation! How hot is that? Maybe now we won't have so many lame-o apps where you can't figure out what you're supposed to do or where you're supposed to go to find something. Totally excited about it, Jirka. Totally excited about it.

A: Good.

And that was that.

:-)

mary