Are you someone who is afraid or proud of ever sounding like a geek? Kathy Sierra recently wrote an interesting blog on the benefit of using jargons. She also argues that "web 2.0" is more like a jargon (good) than a buzzword (bad). Whether you agree with her stand on "web 2.0", or disagree, the blog would definitely help a closet geek to come out and talk all that jargon! :-D

In his recent blog, David Van Couvering writes about the value of a relational database when implementing local storage in web clients. Some of the key benefits he sees include ACID transactions, query capabilities, joins and well-established standards etc. Check out David's blog and find out why he also favors JavaDB in particular.

The JavaScript edition of SDN channel is live at https://blogs.sun.com/sdnchannel. Find out what's happening with JavaScript including all the tools and resources that can be leveraged to build dynamic web solutions. News from this month includes an interview with Roberto Chinnici as he discusses the benefits of Phobos; Ed Burns talks about JSF and why server-side frameworks are so important. Keep an eye out for the SDN channel, cuz more exciting news are coming your way!

In his recent blog, Roberto discusses some interesting aspects of building the application atomserver, which is an implementation of the Atom Publishing Protocol v9 in Phobos. The application also uses some new REST libraries. For more details, please check out Roberto's blog.

Hot on the heels of Pramod's blog about how to set up the debugging feature in NetBeans for Phobos, Roberto is giving us more details on the new features of NetBeans including how to develope and debug a Phobos application. Hopefully with the help of both Pramod's and Roberto's nice demonstration, not to mention the cool features in NetBeans, your adventure into Phobos will be a breeze. Let us know what you think!

If you think debugging a JavaScript program is hard, try debugging a server side JavaScript program. Things get really tricky real fast. Matt Stevens, Ludo and Roberto come to the rescue! They have been working on a NetBeans plugin for debugging those server side JavaScripts in Phobos. Pramod was kind enough to provide the steps on how to setup the debugger. Before a stable build is available, it still takes a few steps to set things up. But it is worth it!

The third annual Web 2.0 Summit is happening in San Francisco. The LaunchPad is a popular event where pre-elected startups show up their stuff to the audience. For a summary of all the companies presenting this year at LaunchPad, see Michael Arrington's blog. Richard MacManus also provided a review of the Web 2.0 Summit LaunchPad. Check them out!

Ludo and Greg have been working hard to provide new Ajax jMaki plugins. Ludo has just reported that a new set of JSP wizards is now available to create JSP files following well defined CSS styles. See more details at Ludo's blog.

Dion Hinchcliffe, after his popular blog "Best Web 2.0 Software List", has recently written about the habits of highly effective Web 2.0 sites. Looking beyond Ajax and the visual site design aspect of Web 2.0, Dion tries to "capture the deeper design patterns and business models that seem to be powering the most successful Web sites and online companies today". He concludes that the essentials of leveraging Web 2.0 include ease of use, aggressively add feedback loops to everything, continuous release cycles etc etc. See Dion's blog here.

Brendan Eich, the creator of JavasScript, gave the final keynote at the Ajax Experience Conference. He showcased some of the new features in JavaScript 1.7 that are shipped with Firefox 2.0, and talked about the future of JavaScript and the Web. He also addressed some concerns and controversies over JavaScript. "His honesty is a breath of fresh air." See Brendan Eich's presentation now available online.

A. Sundararajan has just announced that JSR 223 JRuby script engine at scripting.dev.java.net has been updated to use the newly released JRuby 0.9.1. Check out A. Sundararajan's announcement and what's new in JRuby 0.9.1.