The MySQL webinars are polished presentations that are broadcasted in high-quality and targeted at specific busines needs. Future presentations include Binod on MySQL and SailFin and Arun on JRuby, NetBeans and GlassFish. These presentations are also available for Replay.

A very similar series is the new Software Webinar series. Future events include OpenSSO and MDM; replays available include GlassFish HA and more.

Finally, we also have our weekly TheAquarium Online. These Community presentations, broadcasted using uStream.TV are more informal and technical.

JSF 2.0 went into Public Review Draft and Jim has posted more entries in his series showing how to take advantage of the new functionality. In the first one, he describes how to write an AJAX-aware Editable Text Component - sources are here. The second is a SwitchList - sources for an AJAX-aware variant are here (I suspect Jim will write about that version soon).

Arun has written two pieces on how to use the GlassFish v3 Gem with Merb. In the first one he covers the basics while the second Provides a Scaffold for a typical application. The posts have already been used successfully by Ashley Towers, Grant Michaels, iamclovin. Aded - Also check on details on Grant's Experience.

The winners of the Student Contest on MySQL and GlassFish (Official Rules, Announcement) have been announced. They are grouped into two categories, Campus Ambassadors and General Students, with one Grand Prize and several (4/3) Second Prizes on each. The winners are from Brazil (4), India (3), China (1) and the US (1). Full details (and photos) in the Winner Announcement - and thanks to Arun for the tip.

More Translations, this time of the download pages of GlassFish v3 Prelude to 7 languages: German, Spanish, French, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese - see Ogino's Note;

JavaFX will be launched this Thursday, Dec 4th, but the previews are starting to show. Chris - the original inventor of F3, the precursor to JavaFX - has a Thank-you note, while Robert has published the Reference Manual (thanks to Octavian for the tip). Stay tuned for more news during the launch.

And, in the meantime, on OpenJDK-land, Mark is describing the issues involved in today's Monolithic JDK, which we need to address if we want this infrastructure to be widely available as the basis for efforts like JavaFX.

So, what does Glassfish gem get you? As Jacob writes...

Briefly, it gives you everything from glassfish v3 prelude in a small, easy-to-use package. It's a production-quality application server with all of the features that I've been talking about here: auto-runtime configuration, merb/rack support, application auto-detection, etc.

... plus a toaster... :-)

Check out Vivek and Jacob's writeups for details, including the reference to the toaster.

GlassFish includes EclipseLink as its default JPA implementation but works equally well with Hibernate. There are many users of Hibernate, so the question pops up regularly; Alexis provides an Update on the solution, and we are working on making this even easier to our users.

Merb is gaining traction and we are trying to be friendly to all frameworks; see the Merb RC3 Announcement that explicitly refers to improved GlassFish/JRuby support.

The future plans for Grizzly include NIO2 support (see Webinar on the topic); JFA has started a series of blog notes talking about Tricks and Tips with NIO2.

Earlier this year, during JavaOne, Kohsuke showed how to Embedded GlassFish v3. Byron is not now leading the effort and we recently started having Promoted Builds for the embedded binary. Check out Nazrul report on Support for Scattered WARs, plus the additional links.

Finally, it seems that The Beatles will come to RockBand. The details are stil unfolding but this would be the first time that The Beatles show in a digital franchise. I think this highlights the role that players like RockBand have to distribute IP, in a medium that is richer than the old mp3 player - and also harder to pirate. It is also a reminder of the value of distribution channels (in this case the RockBand store).

TopLink Essentials EclipseLink is the JPA implementation used in the soon-to-be-released GlassFish v3 Prelude. (as well as the RI for JPA 2.0). NetBeans has support for JPA, and this Screencast at NetBeans.TV shows how to use it in NB (thanks to Rob for the tip).

The GlassFish Migration team is soliciting participation from interested parties to Localize the tool. Contact Shinya via that blog entry or by sending email to g11n at glassfish dot dev dot java dot net if interested.

Arun has another post on JSF 2.0; this time showing how to Use JSF 2.0 with Managed Beans.

From OpenDS land, first Ludo points to an article at BigAdmin by Sachin Krishna Telang showing how to Use OpenDS with IBM's WebSphere. Then, Mark describes how he used OpenDS with JRuby.

Dave has published two recent notes focusing on the areas where SocialSite extends the OpenSocial API. The First Post covers People and Friending, Profile Editing and Metadata, Profile Privacy Settings and Group Creation, Management and Invitations. The Second Post covers Gadget Installation and Management, Messaging and Search. Dave promises additional posts.

And, from the land of Java SE, the long-awaited JavaSE 6 U10 release is now available; check Downloads, FAQ and Osvaldo's post. Despite its obscure name, this is a very important release - I'd expect additional posts on the topic early next week.

Arun shows how to use JSF 2.0 with GlassFish v2 in his Mojarra on GFv2. I believe the current thinking is that JSF 2.0 will not depend on Servlet 3.0 and will be able to run on Java EE 5 containers.

Atmosphere, JFA's new portable Comet framework, is now here; check the Announcement.

Jacob promised more JRuby frameworks and it seems that Rack Support is the first step. Rack provides an minimal interface between webservers supporting Ruby and Ruby frameworks, so things like, Merb, build on top of it. Seems a role equivalent to that of modjy in Jython?.

Jiandong shows how to use WS-Trust to Secure Web Services in Metro.

Yesterday's big announcement was T5440 (aka Batoka), a 4 socket, T2-based, 256 hardware threads, at 1.4GHz with up to 512GB memory, all in a 4U chassis! For techies, start with the posts by Allan and Josh, the T5440 WebSite and the Benchmarks. The press has nice reactions: [1], [2], [3]. Also check how to use it to Scale SugarCRM using Ldoms, and the new LDom cookbook. If you like it, give it a Free Try and Buy!.

Today, Apple announced the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros. Need to go check them out at the local Apple store, but I'm disappointed there is no Blu-Ray nor a sub-1K$ entry (in the new enclosure).

From Ruby-land, Zargony is warming up to JRbuy and explains Why I'm starting to like JRuby even though I dislike Java. And Arun writes a short list of the Advantages of JRuby over MRI.

We have been sending notifications to GAP (the GlassFish Awards Program) for a while but on MOnday we had a Press Release aligned with the first SunTech Days in Sao Paolo to celebrate the winners located in Brazil. Special congratulations to Claudio and Reginaldo who were at the event. We are planning a number of blogs to highlight the GAP winners; we won't be able to cover the 108 of them (!) but we will sample a few.

And, Arun is visiting Sao Paolo (and other cities in Brazil) and writes about ES JUG... And about Embu das Artes and about Travel Tips in Brazil.

Showing part of the spread of the Friends and Family part of the GlassFish Server two tutorials: First Sidharth and Marina show OpenSSO on GlassFish, and then Ludo points to John Yeary's Doing authentication and authorization with GlassFish and OpenDS.

Giuseppe points out that the call for papers for the MySQL Users Conference is still open.

At MindBucket Paul provides a comparison of the (single-client) performance of Rails vs Merb. Rails is the incumbent in Ruby frameworks; Merb is a very interesting newcomer. Merb is thread-safe, and so will be Rails 2.0, but the comparison does not consider concurrency so that should be a key issue. The comparison includes numbers on GlassFish Server (and stay tuned for more fine-tuning for that case).

From the NetBeans team, a Tutorial on Securing WebApps using Role-Based authentication. The tutorial has detailed step-by-step instructions using NetBeans 6.5 and GlassFish Server.

Ludo addresses Rapid Deployment of Apps on GlassFish in a thread at the GlassFish Users Forum Also hints at future improvements (teaser!).

Shay reports that Compass 2.1 M3 is now available with improved GlassFish support.

From Mahipalsinh an explanation of how to Localize WebSynergy, so you can do it for your favorite language.

And, on the section of important Industry News, Cisco buys Jabber, which should provide integrated IM in their offerings, and Amazon launches CDN service, a la Akamai, LimeLight and others. One of the nice things of working in this industry, it is never boring!

Jacob explains the (simple) configuration options for JRuby Pool.

Srenga does a Shallow Dive into Mural, the Open Source MDM engine in the GlassFish community.

The JSR314 EG has released the Expert Draft 2 for JSF 2.0 (Download). This version includes Section 13.3 on JavaScript API (thanks for the tip, Roger), as well as Section 3.6 on Composite UI Components (see the Enterprise Tips on this feature: Part I and Part II).

Our household owns several aging Apple laptops so I am keeping an eye on the MacBook Shipments rumor, although OpenSolaris continues to make progress and that may soon be a realistic option for us.

Intel has announced the new high-end Dunnington processors ( InternetNews), and Sun already has machines to accompany them (Marketwatch).

And in all the noise about the LHC I had missed that the CERN is Thumpers and StorageTek products to store the data - through the Customer Ready program.