The Planetarium

With this week's news that the UK London police force will deploy 80,000 smart cards with JavaCard for its building and system access, its good to see that there's a great new way to start working with the technology:

The PlaySIM project is an open source software and hardware project that is truly a playground for a variety of scenarios for JavaCard. A JavaCard is nothing without the environment to which it connects, whether that be through a magnetic reader, near field communication bridge, or if you remember the people counting sensors deployed at JavaOne 2008, in a SunSPOT.

See an in-depth talk about PlaySIM here.

Just many Java developers have evolved from emacs and command lines for developing apps for anything as big as phones and above, there's been this rumor that Java Card developers would come out of the stone age too, which got confirmed by Tim over the weekend.

So NetBeans 6.7 won't just be about saving to Kenai. Good job, SIM cards continue to grow in number.

Smart cards, being small tamper-resistant integrated circuits stuck on plastic, have long been adopted early in Europe. From the first mass deployment on prepaid phone cards in France in 1983, and Carte Blue chip-and-pin cards in 1992, to the wave of popularity of SIM cards in GSM phones in Europe throughout the same decade. Whether the familiar gold-plated contact smart card, or the newer contactless RFID cards used on metros round the world (and coming soon to your credit card, if you dare !), Java Card is the primary application model.

But just as the information stored on a smart card is so difficult to prize off without permission, its surprisingly difficult to find good technical articles on Java Card. Which is why the Planetarium is a fan of the Java Card 3.0 series Eric has been blogging over the last few months or so.

From the shock of a servlet running on a smart card, why Java Card needed to evolve, the connected vs classic profile in Java Card 3, to last week's the detail on how Java Card has evolved from version 2.2, its a great read ( contactless or otherwise).

There's an excellent technical overview of Java Card here.

Java Card is deployed all over the place: from SIM cards, to cash cards, to security badges and national identity cards.

Those of you think that Java Card is too small to be interesting may be surprised to hear that smart cards, like most everything else, are growing powerful enough to run a mini-web server. The latest latest version 3.0 of JavaCard includes support Java Servlets (2.4) (in which the Janitor had some part to play). That's in addition to the existing applet based model.

There's quite a number of practical looking Java Card sessions in store for JavaOne this year.

The Planetarium is now available in Russian !

The Planetarium recently had a new delivery, so its time to announce the Planet Cast. The Planet Cast is a new podcast series devoted slavishly to technical conversations with the expert engineers who help bring you Java SE, JavaFX, Java ME and JavaCard. (No marketing !) What Planet Cast would you like to hear ?

If you are trying to get your application in front of a couple billion users, on their phones, on their PDAs, on their TV set top boxes and Blu-ray players, in their credit card, (or all of the above), you should probably get to know the various profiles of Java ME and Java Card and what frameworks and tools you can use.

A great way to do that is to spend a couple of days at to the M3DD conference this coming January 2009. Roger announced this week that the schedule has been released.

You get your basics in the platforms with talks on MIDP 3, Java Card 3, developing for Blu-ray, JavaFX.

You get up to speed on some of the new frameworks for Java ME development, like LWUIT for GUIs, Diamond Powder for collecting data, Floggy for storing application data.

And more. The Planetarium Janitor wonders if the talk Dating Tips for Developers will have something to do with the talks on Touch technology in Java ME :)

Register here to come in person, or join in online if you can't.

Life is sweet for Java Card developers. Some of them are sunning themselves on the French Riviera at the Smart University today and for the rest of the week.

Chairman of the Java Card Forum's technical committee, Eric Vetillard, posted an interesting analysis today, of why and how this technology, so pervasive in smart cards, is still developing so quickly, even after 12 years since its introduction.

You all probably know that Java Card, currently in version 3.0 as of April 2008, is the baby of the Java family: a subset of the Java SE APIs, Java language and a subset of the Java bytecode with a special encoding to make it even smaller. And that its deployed in massive numbers in a bewidering range of ways: from transport cards, near range based micropayments, to security badges and in SIM cards in mobile phones.

But, did you know that if you have ever developed a Java applet or a Java servlet, you are already familiar with the application model for Java Card ?

Just like a system of amazing planets revolving around a central Sun which sustains each of them, our world is using a growing number and amazing variety of client devices. From smartcards, mobile devices and PDAs, through TV set top boxes to laptops and desktop PCs. Each recieves its sustaining energy, the data it needs to be intelligent, from a body of central services.

What better way to observe the movement of planets than from a planetarium.

I'm starting this blog as a one stop location to follow technology developments in the various editions of the Java platform that bring intelligence to this collection of devices. As a subscriber to this blog, you will have a front row seat to get a unique and up to the minute perspective of news, views, comments and technology releases of Java ME for mobile and embedded devices, Java SE on the desktop and JavaFX for all.

What better way to observe the development of Java technology for client devices than from here, The Planetarium.

Danny Coward, Chief Architect, Client Software, Sun Microsystems. And Planetarium Janitor.