Thursday May 08, 2008
Duke's Spin at JavaOne is brought to you by the folks behind the Sun Developer Network, aka SDN, aka http://developers.sun.com. My team and I have been working with the folks at SDN to publish our documentation for the Java CAPS 6 early access release. All of the planning, coordination and development for the Java CAPS hub on SDN has been by conference call and one to one calls. By volunteering to help at Duke's Spin this week, I had the opportunity to meet the editors and writers and production team for SDN, face to face. I also got to meet hundreds of JavaOne attendees.
Thursday May 08, 2008
The line for Duke's spin has been like a line for a Disneyland ride. At various time over the past 3 days, folks were waiting in excess of 35 minutes for the opportunity to spin the wheel and win some Sun swag. I'm glad that ride is over ...
Wednesday May 07, 2008
This year's shirt for employees working in the Sun booths on the JavaOne Pavilion is a lovely, tan short-sleeved button shirt. NOT. The men's version might be intended as a Tommy Bahama knock-off. The rayon-polyester fabric has a window-pane pattern, intended to give it texture. Unfortunately, it fits more like a bowling shirt. The women's version is a little more shapely, but I hear the sizing is a little skimpy. The tan color is a good complement to most skin tones. again NOT.
You can check out mine tomorrow from 11:30 am to 2 pm at the line for Duke's Spin.
Tuesday May 06, 2008
Thanks for the feedback to the Java CAPS 6 Early Access Docs on SDN. We've made lots of changes already, based on your feedback.
Take a look at the new At a Glance page. We've added a section on Getting Started with Java CAPS .
We've added a new section called How do I ... This section creates a map to the topics a user may need to complete a particular task.
A more stream-lined site map replaces the original site map.
You can subscribe to RSS feeds to follow changes to documentation, tutorials and samples.
Check it all out at Java CAPS 6 Early Access Docs.
Monday May 05, 2008
I started work at Sun 13 years ago today.
Monday Apr 28, 2008
The Sun Java CAPS 6 Early Access Site went live on April 25, 2008 at ~6 pm, Pacific, on the Sun Developer Network ("SDN")
All of the early access documentation is now available, outside of the SWAN. You can chack it out at The Java CAPS Documentation tab on SDN.
When Java CAPS 6 goes RR, our topic-based documentation and guides will be available on http://docs.sun.com as well, with both html and pdf downloads.
We are delivering on our strategy for Java CAPS 6 docs--
Making product documentation more accessible to our users
Transitioning from books to topics
Transitioning from non-structured to structured authoring, allowing us to create different outputs for the web and reuse content
Developing a way for the community to provide targeted feedback-- there are feedback buttons on each page. We are continuing to work with IPG and other Sun teams to integrate a more inter-active feedback tool.
We would like to know what you are thinking. Tell what you like. Tell us what you would change. Tell us how to make the experience better for the customer. We know that there are still a lot of gaps and errors. Use the feedback button on the bottom of the page to submit your comments. This will help us test the feedback system as well.
This project has been a huge effort. Thanks to--
Carla King (SDN Managing Editor), Cathy Arima (.sun.com Production), Steve Cogorno (IPG Engineer), Jeff Ramsey (IPG Media Design), Michael Quillman (IPG Media Design), Jeff Gardiner's IPG Production team who helped with our doc conversions (Suzy Haines, Jennifer Ofiana and Ron Morton).
Also, thanks to our writers! The writing team draws from several project teams, and they are located world-wide.
The SOA-BI Technical Publications Group - Monrovia (Kevin Hopke, Manager)
Louis Kraft,
Jeff Stein,
Paul Carpenter,
Ron Jacobus,
Dario Padilla,
Mark Moussa,
Wallis Sholar,
Don McKinney,
Carol Thom,
Norm Stahlberg
The IEC Writing Team (Latha K., Manager)
Divya Bhanot,
Prabha Sathyanarayana,
Kunal Deo
The St. Petersberg Writing Team (Irina Fillipova, Manager)
Anastasia Koval
Sun Java Application Server Writing Team (Alan Sommerer, Manager)
Paul Davies,
Hanan Lang,
Chinmayee Srivathsa
and the rest of the writers who contributed to SJAS9.1
Watch for future blogs on Java CAPS documentation!
Tuesday Apr 22, 2008
My son will be 13 years old this summer. Right now he's in the middle of a growth spurt. Two more inches, and we'll be seeing eye to eye.
It's inevitable-- he'll be looking down on me by the end of the year. Is it a coincidence that I went out and bought myself three pairs of shoes with 2" heels? I guess I'm just trying to postpone the inevitable.
Thursday Feb 14, 2008
email filters are one of those tools we use to help us manage the deluge of unsolicited email that we receive on a daily basis. For months I dutifully sent SPAM to Sun's SPAM alias. Nonetheless, the spammers kept at it. Finally, for the sake of my own productivity, I figured out how to set up personal filters to rid myself of the frequent spammers.
The problem with email filters is that there are sometimes unintended consequences.
For example, all the notices from Sun's password management folks reminding me to make my semi-annual change to my LDAP password (or else) were filtered to my trash. Needless to say, yesterday I didn't have access to my email, or to much of anything else that required my LDAP password. So much for productivity. Since I can't figure out which filter caught the email notices, I will have to resort to setting up my own 6 month calendar reminder.
Tuesday Dec 18, 2007
The Sun B2B Suite Version 5.1.1 is available on the Sun download center. The documentation for this release is available on docs.sun.com, Sun's main documentation website. The docs are published in three collections:
The documentation for this release is available online in html/xml. PDF is available for download as well. Thanks to the writing team in Sun's Monrovia and IEC offices: Paul Carpenter, Don McKinney and Anjana Rudra.
Wednesday Dec 05, 2007
I am so behind the curve on Web 2.0 (now 3.0), and I couldn't laugh when the bubble burst, but I smiled a lot while watching this:
Here Comes Another Bubble.
Friday Nov 16, 2007
Adobe announced this week that it's CEO, Bruce Chizen, is stepping down. The San Jose Mercury News did a wonderful tribute to Bruce on it's editorial page today. Wow.
In the spirit of full disclosure-- I do know Bruce personally. But this is still a very cool statement from the local press about Bruce's values and impact within the community. It also says a lot about qualities of leadership.
Tuesday Jul 17, 2007
The docs.sun.com team announced enhancements to the search on the docs.sun.com site.
Today the docs.sun.com engineering team has migrated its search capabilities from the existing search mechanism to the .Sun search standard - Sun Search.
The benefit of this move is:
Consistency for our customers
Customers will now experience the same highly relevant results that are available on many other Sun web sites and applications, translating to an overall better user experience. To help provide a smooth transition to the new search functionality see the "New Search Methodology" on "What's new":
Sun Internal site --> http://docssust.sfbay/source/DSCHelp/p2.html
Sun External site --> http://docs.sun.com/source/DSCHelp/p2.html
This move represents another major step toward improvements planned for the docs.sun.com site.
Please direct any questions or feedback to dsc-engrg@sun.com.
Chris Mason
Engineering manager for Docs.sun.com
Friday Jul 13, 2007
The docs.sun.com team has made some recent changes that noticeably improve performance on the site. See Tech Dogg's Dox Tox:
docs.sun.com: From Rots to Rocks! for the details. Kudos to the docs.sun.com team!
Wednesday Jun 20, 2007
A colleague of mine, Layne Ethington, recently died, losing a very quick battle to brain cancer. Layne was a Solaris System Administration writer. I worked with him when I was program manager for Solaris and OpenSolaris documentation.
We held a memorial at Sun for him this past week. It was a beautiful tribute to him, filled with both tears and laughter, as folks shared their memories with each other. Layne touched the hearts of a lot of people in our department. I learned so much about him that I never knew, or ever took the time to ask.
I have to admit that I've been in kind of a funk since the memorial though. Yes, I'm in a funk because some one I knew and cared about is gone. I am in more of a funk though because of how little I knew about Layne, and how little I know about a lot of people I work with. I don't often take the time to go to lunch with friends and colleagues, as I eat at my desk. Family commitments usually push me toward home after work, instead of going out with the gang. My average work day filled with meetings and emails doesn't allow much time for even simple conversations with the people that I spend more waking hours with than my family.
Layne's death serves as a reminder to me, to smell the roses, to go out to lunch with friends more often, and to talk about the things that matter in the world.
Wednesday May 23, 2007
My commute takes me by the site once known in Sun history as PAL01. The building, originally a Ford Aerospace building, overlooks the entrance to 101 north, my pathway to MPK17. ( Yes, I still commute to a Sun office everyday, by choice!) Sun moved out of PAL01 years ago and sold the property. The site will become the future home of the Palo Alto Jewish Community Center, some senior housing and additional community facilities. It's an enormous project that took years to take through the Palo Alto planning and approval process. The construction site has been busy for months, but PAL01 remained intact. Well, PAL01 is finally coming down. Just last week I noticed a large hole on one side and a pile of crumbling rubble, evidence that the wrecking ball had been there. It's another piece of the changing face of Silicon Valley.
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