James reports on the latest news on JavaCard 3.  JavaCard (wikipedia, spec site) is what we all have in our pockets (ATM cards) and/or our phones (SIM cards). The JavaCard 3 comes in two Editions: Classic (for SIM/ATMs) and Connected. The new kid, Connected, supports most of the JDK6 VM as well as Servlet 2.5, extended and classic Applets, HTTP and HTTPS, etc. The target of JavaCard3 Connected includes secure USB tokens and personal DBs, Embedded Servers, WebDAV-Compliant Thumb Drives, etc.

JavaCard Connected seems it may deliver on the promise of "connected" Java devices everywhere; we will see how it gets adopted. There is a new project at Kenai focused on learning about JavaCard Connected. The project includes the NetBeans Plugin (see sneak preview).

The 2009 edition of the JVM Languages Summit is Sep 16-18, at Sun's Santa Clara Campus. This is an "open technical collaboration among language designers, compiler writers, tool builders, runtime engineers, and VM architects". All reports are that last year's event was very successful, and this one is organized by the same group. Check out the Main Page, the Agenda, and the invitations by John, JAG and Charlie. See the Registration Online; for questions, send mail to inquire AT jvmlangsummit.com.

Not exactly the Antipodes but I think we can argue we have the whole world covered... While FISL is hosted in Porto Alegre, Jazoon will be held in Zurich. Check out the Jazoon Home Page and Schedule and check Alexis' List of Talks related to GlassFish. And, if you are on the other side, check GlassFish @FISL!

As part of the the WebSpace Server 10 release, Ed Ort (from java.sun.com) and I sat down to do a deep dive webcast for GlassFish WebSpace Server. Parts 1 and 2 were originally published a few weeks ago. Now, parts 3 and 4 are now available and cover development tooling, and end user social collaboration techniques. Enjoy!

This week's webinar is on Ehcache, the popular java-based cache - #1 among GlassFish users, according to a recent informal survey. This presentation, by Greg Luck, its lead maintainer and the Chief Architect of Wotif.com, covers the theory of caching, the architecture of Ehcache, Features of the product, Usage Patterns and includes some code samples. The presentation on Thursday, May 7th, 11am US Pacific, at TheAquarium Channel. Full details (and recordings) at the Show Page.

Google AppEngine has added Java support (announcement). The list of JVM-based languages includes JRuby, Groovy, Jython and Scala. A list of the supported standards is here; the intention seems to be to provide a "web tier" set of specs for Java and JVM-based languages but the details are not very clear (to me), for example, it claims Servlet 2.4 (not 2.5), some version of JPA, partial JSP support. Hopefully the list will evolve into one of the modern standard at some point; perhaps the Web Profile in Java EE 6?

I cannot catch up with all the backlog of OpenDS news in a single post so for now I'll just mention the Availability of OpenDS 1.3 b2 and then I want to highlight the work related to Garbage First (G1) GC.

G1 is our most recent Garbage Collecting algorithm and it is intended to replace the current CMS (see John's Overview of JDK's GCs) in JDK7. G1 is sketched in Alex's note; more details in TS-5419 or try it by yourself in a recent OpenJDK. The OpenDS team has high demands for performance and responsivenes which makes them a good demanding customer for the G1 team (like CBOE!) and, in a recent visit, the two worked together to improve performance - see Matt's writeup. A good example of the advantage to Sun of leading both projects!

Report on the last week of submissions for Project Coin's week 4. 26 new proposals in the last week, 70 altogether; with over 1100 messages in the mailing list. As the song goes... Pretty Fly (for a White Guy) (or a language no longer deemed cool...). In addition to the relevance of the Java Language, I see this is a good example of the benefits of an open process, with a receptive project leader.

Too many interesting examples to highlight - but I'll choose two from John Rose: JSR 292 Support (mail) and Expressions in Strings. Looking forward to more details on the analysis of the submissions.

Nice progress on Project Coin, the project for accepting small changes to the Java Language.

Joe is reporting over 17 proposals in his latest post, including familiar names like Neal Gafter, Josh Bloch and Bob Lee, but also many others; I tried to get an up-to-date count from the Mail Archive but there was hard to count... which is good. I think the project will be a big success, and may be a good indicator of the type of activity possible through OpenJDK. I'll keep you posted, in the meantime, check out Joe's status update and his Strings in Switch proposal.

The Java language has seen a few big additions like Generics but also a number of small changes. These changes are less glamorous but they continuously improve the "fit and finish" of the language and I'm happy to see today's announcement by Joe on the new OpenJDK Project Coin targeted to JDK 7. To get the full background check Joe's description of What's Needed to add a new Java language feature (spec changes, implementation, tests...); his announcement of small changes in JDK 7; and then the criteria for these changes.

Sun has just released the Preview of the JavaFX SDK. This release targets developers and scripters, is available for Windows and Mac and has the following content:

• The JavaFX compiler and runtime (2D graphics, media libraries)
• Command-line tools (javafx, javafxc and javafxdoc)
• NetBeans plugin (build, preview, debug)
• Project Nile: add-on to Adobe tools to product JavaFX
• Documentation, tutorial, samples

This is all available in an all-in-one download and provides more content than the community openjfx.com site.

The relationship to server-side computing is in the way JavaFX clients can interact with Java-based back-ends (including with client-side dependency injection for things like web services or EJB references). Get previous coverage on JavaFX by following the javafx tag.

Sun offers quite a number of training courses, and some of them are even free. Some I noticed this week:

Trond highlights two very interesting free Webinars next week with top speakers (tip): "Highly scalable solutions with MySQL and Memcached" (Wed) and "Designing and Implementing Scalable Applications with Memcached and MySQL" (Thu). Marina points to free Student Courses as part of the resources at the Student Portal. Arun and Daniel mention Sang's latest course on Ruby and Rails. Sang's Java Passion site has many good online courses using the GlassFish Server, including JavaEE, Web Services and EJB.

Sun has many other courses, sometimes it's just a bit hard to find them. For example, the site for online and in classroom courses offered by Sun is http://www.sun.com/training and many of these are related to GlassFish, but a Search for "glassfish" will yield only a few of those.

We are working to fix that last problem, and I try to capture courses I know at GlassFishForBusiness, but what we really need is a full-time librarian... ideally a super one, like Conan the Librarian.

Dru is raising the often repeated question of Hosting Java Apps. I'm interested in what people are doing today, so I'd encourage you to check his note and post your thoughts there, or here. I'll summarize the answers / comments here for convenience, grouped by origin. Added - Please keep posting leads and experiences; this will be very useful.

The following are Comments in Dru's blog:

• Dru mentions GoDaddy has Tomcat, but they restart all TCs daily.
• Cay points out that Java Hosting would support Java teaching.
• Ryan suggests GFv3 will be useful, but that hosting has specific admin needs.
• Kumar uses virtual servers at GoDaddy.
• smayzak suggests Kattare.COM (but only has TC, Resin & JBoss, no GF)
• mbosch suggests VPS with Virtualization and mentions Rimuhosting.
• ccombs recommends virtual servers through eapps.com (soon w/ GF).
• jwynacht has been using AOIndustries.
• straun had collected jHosts but now recommends RimuHosting for VPS and dedicated.
• Arvind also recommends RimuHosting.
• hchaudh1 provides another recommendation for eapps.com.

On this spotlight, we have these comments:

• Lars suggests dedicated servers - he mentions [1], [2] or VPS - no names yet.

John Rose has proposed a new OpenJDK project, the Multi-Language VM. Years ago John and I worked together on Scheme-related projects and I know his expertise and commitment to this area, so looking forward to the evolution of the project, specially given the goals of Java EE 6. Send responses to the Discuss@OpenJDK alias. I see there is already one follow-up Added: John has published a summary for the first JSR 292 EG Meeting/a>.

The Divas had a tip for a video of Tor showcasing Java and Ruby Development. It is very nice, based on the demo at the JavaOne keynote. You can watch it, check the Script, or look at several other resources. But..

... I had not realized the NetBeans folks had done so much work at the NetBeans.tv site! The theme for the site is visual - videos and pictures. They have several sections emphasizing different areas: Members of the Community, Interviews with key Developers, Technology and Screencasts, Extending NB and Using the Platform and Trip Reports. Pretty nice!