OpenOffice.org is the Top CNet Download pick. Tom Merritt, executive editor at CNET, is a user (and so am I :-)): I use it everyday instead of Microsoft Office and I don't have any issues with it..

I poked around a bit for download metrics and found two sites: Downloads and Visits. The download numbers are about 360K/week, which is roughly three times GlassFish's Current Download Rate - with the usual caveat about many distributions for successful Open Source projects.

Jean-François "Grizzly" Arcand has posted two slide decks he used last month during his European tour : • Grizzly (covers basics, use in GlassFish V3, and the recent 1.7 release) • Comet, aka Ajax Push (if you ask Jean-François, it's the best thing since slided bread, and who knows, he may be right :)

You may have noticed last month's news about Net App filing a lawsuit against Sun for patent infringement on ZFS ([1], [2], [3]). ZFS is OpenSource and has a growing number of adopters so this could be seen as a good example of the value of indemnity when purchasing support from Sun for OpenSource-based products like OpenSolaris or GlassFish. This week both Jonathan [1] and Mike Dillon [2] explained the next steps that Sun is taking in this front. Don't miss the ever-growing list of comments at Jonathan's entry - 81 as of this writeup. Also you may want to check Simon's comments on a related experience.

Breaking News: • Oracle Announces Intent to Acquire BEA.   Good news for GlassFish... Also see Discussion at TSS.

JAX-WS RI no longer depends on the SAAJ RI. • Check Jitu's Announcement.   This is important because it simplifies running Metro in more containers, like WebSphere AppServer.

Rails Europe Conference Report from Arun. Covering GlassFish, jMaki, jRuby and NetBeans. • Day 1. • Day 2.

Jersey News from Marc: • How to Integrate Spring and Jersey using the SPI previously reported. • The integration is also mentioned by Paul. • ... and don't forget that Jersey is now in the Update Center.

Latest jMaki NEWS. • From Greg: jMaki 1.0 is Fast Approaching. • And, to celebrate, jMaki.COM is now available.

Ken Drachnik is interviewed in the latest SDN channel episode. This short interview is an overview of where the project stands now with a slight focus on Linux (the theme of this SDN Channel series).

Virtualization is really hot now. We recently mentioned about Using LDOMs to partition a T2-based system. This week's annoncement of Solaris 10 8/07 includes New Zones Features including BrandZ Zones. The first BrandZ (lX) allows Running Linux Apps on Solaris (see earlier news). A new announcement is Project Etude which enables Solaris 8 Apps running as guests on a Solaris 10 host; see Marc's Business Overview and Dan's Technical Overview. Also see these reviews at Dr. Dobb's, The Register and EnterpriseLinux.

Added: Also see the announcement about Windows and Solaris virtualization.

Breaking News: IBM Joins OpenOffice.ORG. • News: IBM PR, FAQ, IBM as JCA signatory. • Commentary: Erwin, Simon, Peter.

If there was any doubt about how hot Virtualization is, check this Bloomberg Report on the initial offering for VMWare for US$ 957M.

Virtualization is happening at multiple layers in the hardware/software stack. At the bottom we have things like the Sun's ldoms - see this screencast of how to boot 64 Solaris domains on the recently launched UltraSPARC T2. Higher up we have things like Xen and VMWare.

Virtualization is a complex landscape; I'll ask Tim for a pointer to a good short description comparing and contrasting the solutions, the wikipedia entry is particularly unhelpful.

I can't resist... I am a fan of the "rethink the box" attitude of Project Blackbox and they just shipped to their first customer... Check the Press Article and the SlashDot coverage, and Pauls' writeup for details. Or go look at the Time-lapsed movie of the installation. It starts at 6am, and the whole thing is done by 11:26am! Way to go! Other recent "rethinkings" from the Sun hardware team include: Constellation (Blog, movie, press) and Thumper. The new Blade Chasis is pretty cool too, although arguably does not have the same Wow! factor.

Apache Geronimo has passed all the tests in the JavaEE 5 CTS test suite. Geronimo is pursuing two Web Services stacks (report card); these results used CXF. According to the announcement, "the official 2.0 release is anticipated at the end of June / early July", which puts it very close to Eclipse 3.3 (Europa). Congratulations to the Apache community! Competition and options are good for customers, we welcome Geronimo to the Java EE 5 Compatibility party.

We are steadily moving towards Mark Weiser's Ubiquitous Computing, beyond PCs and mobile phones, into a world with robots, virtual worlds (Second Life, DarkStar, plain old software development...) and mapping elements between these worlds (like Extreme Feedback Devices, ORBs and bar codes. The Project Sun SPOT investigates a way to build these devices and they recently made available a development kit. One recent use of SPOTs has been in Project BlackBox ([1], [2]) If you are interested in more details, check out these JavaOne events.

I find the uses of SPOTS quite intriging and I am trying to get one kit for my group to play with and another to make available as a prize to whoever comes with the best idea. Start thinking and stay tuned for more details on the contest.