Out of the Woodwork

Video: Project SocialSite In One Minute

As Dave noted a few days ago, we have a video that demonstrates Project SocialSite (by turning your MediaWiki instance into a social networking system in 1 minute, 8 seconds). I'm sure you'll all want to give the video a top rating (which helps us in a contest for the Enterprise 2.0 Conference). So I wanted to remind everyone that today is the deadline to submit your ratings. :)

Tags: opensocial socialsite video web2.0

Posted at 11:54AM May 12, 2008 by Jamey Wood in Web 2.0  |  Comments[0]

PinkDots Onstage at JavaOne

The "Pink Dots" Maps made the big stage at JavaOne last week--albeit with a new (pink-free) color scheme. Here is a picture (taken from Arun's extensive collection) showing Rich Green talking about a map of world-wide GlassFish usage:

It's always fun to see one of your babies in the spotlight. :)

Tags: javaone javaone2008 maps pinkdots

Posted at 11:07AM May 12, 2008 by Jamey Wood in Maps  |  Comments[0]

My Favorite Online Poll

Slashdot is running an interesting poll today:

How Many People Will Select The Same Option As You?

• 0%
• 1-25%
• 26-50%
• 51-75%
• 76-99%
• 100%
• Just CowboyNeal

Give it a little thought... Then head then over there to vote and see the results.

For now, I won't spoil things with any further commentary of my own.

Tags: poll slashdot

Posted at 01:52PM Jan 28, 2008 by Jamey Wood in Potpourri  |  Comments[0]

Coca-Cola Breakfast Beverage Suite, Citrus Edition

Imagine that Coca-Cola followed the tech industry's lead for product naming. Since they bought Minute Maid in 1960, you could have ended up drinking out of this thing each morning.

Tech companies love to mash a bunch of stuff together under a top-level brand and then slice things up with sub-naming, suites, and special editions. Here at Sun, this approach has has given us product names like:

• Sun Java Desktop System
• Sun Java System Access Manager
• Sun Java System Directory Server Enterprise Edition
• Sun Java System Web Proxy Server
• Sun Java System Web Server

The argument for this approach goes something like this:

• It concentrates our efforts on building the strength of a few key brands (such as Java and Sun).
• It yields descriptive names which people are likely to understand from the first time they're heard.

Even if we concede these points, I would argue that they're far out-weighed by negatives:

• The names are too long.
  • There is a reason that "Beautiful Child, Genius Edition" never makes the list of popular baby names. Parents may think it perfectly describes their child, but they're still pragmatic enough to realize that it won't fly as a name. People just don't talk that way. They don't even write that way. So if someone does mention one of these products, chances are they'll do so using their own incorrect abbreviation or permutation of its proper name. Every time that happens, we miss an opportunity for real brand reinforcement. And with today's search-driven information access, it also makes it hard to learn about the products. (Do I Google for "Access Manager" or "Sun Java System Access Manager" or "SJSAM" or "OpenSSO" or ...?)
• They're stretching to tie products to a top-level brand where there is little natural connection.
  • What's so Java-ish about the Sun Java Desktop System? The windowing environment certainly isn't written in Java. The majority of the apps you'll use in it aren't written in Java. Java is a great brand which represents great technology, but is it really applicable here? Or are we doing the equivalent of slapping a soda brand onto a juice carton?

Of course, not all tech products follow this pattern. Open Source software projects and Web 2.0 service offerings tend to use names composed of just one or two unique words (often inventing new words or spellings in the process). And Ina Fried of CNET reports that even Microsoft is rethinking their naming strategy. The company has already simplified the name of one major new offering (from "Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere" to "Silverlight"). And they have a team working to reeducate the entire company on branding. Among that team's favorite tools is a poster they're plastering around Microsoft's buildings. It shows a box of Band-Aids and the caption: "You wouldn't call it Wound Healer 2.0."

Hmm... Wonder if they printed any extras.

Tags: brands marketing naming sun

Posted at 12:06AM Jul 18, 2007 by Jamey Wood in Potpourri  |  Comments[3]

Deep-Linking Into The Pink Dots

The "pink dots" maps have been getting some special attention lately. First, Jonathan referenced our original Solaris registrations map to make a point about how Sun's embrace of free software is driving adoption of our technologies. Then yesterday, Eduardo mentioned our new GlassFish adoption map on The Aquarium.

Both Jonathan and Eduardo asked readers to look at a particular map view to get an illustration of their point. One thing worth mentioning is that it's actually possible to link directly to such views.

For example, Jonathan (who wanted his readers to look at the map with a blank background) could have referenced this URL:

http://sysnet.sunwarp.net/maps/?lat=39.75&lng=-105&zoom=2&mtype=Blank

Or Eduardo (who wanted users to look at how GlassFish usage had increased in Brazil) might have referenced this URL for February:

http://beta.glassfish.java.net:81/maps/?lat=-12.89748918375589&lng=-51.50390625&zoom=4&mtype=Map&otype=gf_admin_hits_2007_02_exclusive

...and this one for April:

http://beta.glassfish.java.net:81/maps/?lat=-12.89748918375589&lng=-51.50390625&zoom=4&mtype=Map&otype=gf_admin_hits_2007_04_exclusive

But wait, those are complicated URLs. How could anyone possibly know which one to use?

It's easy. Just find the map view that you want and then copy the link referenced by the "This View" anchor in the map page. It's the link which I've highlighted in yellow below:

The JavaScript code in the maps page dynamically updates this link to always reference a URL which would recreate the current view.

So there you have it. If you want to have people look at some specific view of these maps to illustrate your point, you can send them there with just one click.

However, there is one caveat...

These deep-linking URLs guarantee that everyone will see the same map view at a given center point and zoom level. However, the actual amount of territory visible in the map (and thus summarized in the sidebar stats) will depend on the user's window size and screen resolution. So they won't necessarily see exactly the same image and figures that you do (though it should be close, assuming that most people have reasonably-sized screens and windows).

Tags: glassfish maps mashups pinkdots solaris sun visualization

Posted at 11:50AM Jun 08, 2007 by Jamey Wood in Maps  |  Comments[5]

Harnessing CAPTCHAs to Read Books

NETWORK WORLD has a piece about an interesting project called reCAPTCHA. The project started when Carnegie Mellon professor Luis von Ahn realized that people are collectively wasting over 150,000 hours of effort every day solving those visual CAPTCHA puzzles that certain sites (such as Yahoo) require before allowing you to perform some action (such as registering or posting). His solution won't save you any time, but it will make that time go to a good use: digitizing the world's books.

Instead of just making up an arbitrary visual puzzle which is useful only for determining whether you're a human, reCAPTCHA uses images of text from not-yet-digitized books as its puzzles. It still serves the primary purpose of determining whether you're a human, but has the secondary benefit of identifying text which is hard for present OCR systems to handle.

Clever, isn't it? But wait, you say... If the puzzle uses text which isn't yet digitized, how does the system know whether you've answered correctly or not? Don't worry, they thought of that. Per the project's own description:

But if a computer can't read such a CAPTCHA, how does the system know the correct answer to the puzzle? Here's how: Each new word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is given to a user in conjunction with another word for which the answer is already known. The user is then asked to read both words. If they solve the one for which the answer is known, the system assumes their answer is correct for the new one. The system then gives the new image to a number of other people to determine, with higher confidence, whether the original answer was correct.

Pretty cool stuff. Want to learn more? You could start by looking into the field of human computation. Or for an example of a not-so-positive application, there is a well-know method to defeat one site's CAPTCHAs by recycling them in some other popular setting (such as a free porn site).

Tags: captcha captcha-farming humancomputation recaptcha spam

Posted at 10:18AM May 25, 2007 by Jamey Wood in Potpourri  |  Comments[0]

Slynkr on JavaDB

The first question my boss asked after I got the Slynkr code released as a java.net project: where can I file an RFE for it to install with one click using a JavaDB back-end? Then, as if on cue, the first outside message on the project's dev aliases followed suit: "What are your thoughts about other support for other databases (ie, MySQL and/or Postgres)?"

I may be slow, but I think I see the message. People might just want to use a database other than Oracle (which is what we used for our initial development of Slynkr). Well, guess what? You can do it.

It's not yet a one-click install process (sorry, Eduardo). And I personally haven't yet tried things out with MySQL or PostgreSQL (sorry, Nick). But I do now have instructions for running Slynkr using a JavaDB back-end (aka Apache Derby). If you're wanting to get your own instance of Slynkr up and running, this is currently your best bet. After all, Oracle is a nice database but it's a lot of overhead for just trying something out.

So please, give it a shot. If you run into problems, let me know. Or if you see ways to make things better, update the instructions (that's why they're on a Wiki, after all).

Oh, and by the way... I think that at least MySQL support should be pretty easy also. Here at Sun, we actually have an internal Slynkr instance which is using MySQL. I just don't have instructions for it (yet).

Tags: glassfish howto javadb mysql slynkr web2.0

Posted at 04:22PM May 24, 2007 by Jamey Wood in Web 2.0  |  Comments[1]

Slynkr: Open Source System for Social News, Bookmarking, and Tagging

Hello everybody out there reading blogs.sun.com. I'm doing a (free) social news and bookmarking system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like Digg and del.icio.us). It's been brewing for quite a while now, but I just recently got Sun's okay to release it as an open source project.

I hope it isn't too presumptuous of me to base that intro on another project's announcement, but I think it illustrates what Slynkr is all about: sharing and building on each others' work. When you submit something to a social news or bookmarking system, you almost always start with a URL for content which someone other than you wrote. So you build on their work by adding some kind of summary or commentary and a few keywords (tags). Then others come along and build on your work by adding their own tags and voting on whether they think the underlying item is any good. The more people contribute, the better the system becomes.

Of course, that's very similar to how open source software works. The more people contribute, the better the code becomes. That's what we're hoping to gain by making Slynkr open source. It's a usable system today (as you can see at slynkr.sunwarp.net or www.sdnshare.com), but it certainly has room for improvement. We'd love to have your help and ideas to make those improvements happen.

Here is an example of Slynkr in action. It's a dynamic view of any tags which have been applied to a post in the "Hardware -> SPARC -> UltraSPARC -> T1" category (or, in other words, tags which have been applied to Niagara-related posts):

Most other systems support live queries, but often they're of a more fixed nature (e.g. only supporting a few specific queries, such as "return all of user X's tags"). I think that supporting an unbounded set of queries illustrates some of the potential of Slynkr (though also some of the challenges it must face in making sure its solution scales). Again, I hope you'll consider joining our open source project to help us address this and other challenges. (And going back to my intro, we actually do aspire to make this plenty "big and professional.")

Finally, I certainly haven't created Slynkr by myself. Many people have chipped in with ideas and support. These people have been especially involved:

• Lou Ordorica: original idea, look & feel, and other follow-up ideas and support
• Jeff Shoup: co-developed the Slynkr code
• Erik Larson: conceptual input
• Todd Wichers: hosting support for our slynkr.sunwarp.net instance

I'd also like to thank the people behind sites like flickr, del.icio.us, and Digg. Their development and popularization of practices such as tagging and user-controlled voting were obviously major influences for us in the development of Slynkr.

Tags: slynkr socialbookmarking tagging voting web2.

Posted at 10:59AM May 21, 2007 by Jamey Wood in Web 2.0  |  Comments[3]

Cool Technology Names

The INQUIRER is running a list of the "top 10 greatest ever technology names". Sounds like it should be a fun little read, doesn't it?

Well, I found it disappointing. It was nice to see Sun included (#5), but overall their list seemed pretty weak. With just a couple minutes of thought, I think I have a list that beats theirs (though I won't try to order mine or give it exactly ten entries). Here goes...

• Eclipse. Of course, I don't like to see anyone taking a slap at my employer. But if you're going to do it, you might as well be clever about it.
• Apache. Your project starts out as a collection of patches for NCSA's HTTPD code. So you end up naming yourself Apache (as in "a patchy web server"). Not bad.
• GlassFish. Okay, I'm part of this project and I'm biased. But I really do love the name. After years of criticism for not making the evolution and development of Java sufficiently open and visible, Sun names its open source Java EE project after an animal which is literally defined by its transparency. How cool is that?
• Niagara. It's officially just the code name, but could there possibly be a more elegant way to describe Sun's chip multithreading processors? If you've ever been to a presentation about Niagara, you may have seen a slide which compares traditional processors and CMT processors using pictures of different waterfalls. A traditional processor is like a very fast waterfall that's only a few feet wide, whereas a CMT processor is like Niagara Falls--slower moving, but extremely wide. If you're just trying to get one or two things done (over the falls), the fast and narrow waterfall is great. But if you need to move a bunch of things at once, you want the Niagara. Like I said: elegant.
• UNIX. It set a standard for poking fun at a predecessor (as in "one of whatever Multics was many of").
• GNU. It may not be the catchiest name around, but you have to respect the whole recursive acronym thing. What's GNU? GNU's Not Unix. Right, but what's GNU? GNU's Not Unix. But what's GNU? ... Abbott and Costello would be proud.

Anyhow... Those are some cool names which came to mind for me. What's on your list?

Tags: names tech terminology

Posted at 05:18PM May 18, 2007 by Jamey Wood in Potpourri  |  Comments[1]

GlassFish @ JavaOne: By The Numbers

486. Could this simple number be stealing the show at the world's largest developer conference?

Maybe. It's getting some help, though. 100, 3, 5, and 2.5 million are also important numbers. Specifically, I'm talking about:

But again, I think 486 is the one that really caught people's attention. App Servers just don't start in half a second. And they sure don't fit into 100KB. So what's going on here?

Well, in fairness, only part of GlassFish v3 is starting in that 486ms. But it's the core part. Everything else can (and is) only loaded when it's actually needed. So you only pay (in memory and initialization overhead) for what you use. It's kind of like we put Sparky (our beloved mascot) on a dynamic diet so that he automatically shrinks or grows to exactly the size you need.

That really could be a game-changer, redefining how we look at App Servers and where we use them. In the conference sessions, for example, many have asked about the possibility of running GlassFish v3 on small devices like phones. And in the blogosphere, Adam Bien wonders whether it could become common to embed GlassFish v3 inside rich client applications. They're interesting possibilities (and all indications are that both could work well).

Let's not forget the last couple of numbers in our list. Java EE 5 makes similar reductions for the consumption of developers' time that GlassFish v3 will do for the consumption of machine resources. It makes development of EJBs and other EE components much simpler and faster by using quick and easy annotations to replace what previously required a lot of boilerplate code and configuration. And 2.5 million downloads demonstrates just how much traction existing GlassFish releases have achieved. So while we do have to wait for v3 to reach production readiness, we have strong options in the meantime including GlassFish v1 (available in a production-quality final release for over a year and used in high-volume sites such as Wotif.com) and GlassFish v2 (which adds new features such as clustering and scripting language support and has just reached Beta 2--making it very close to a final production-quality release).

Yes, I'm biased because I work at Sun and specifically on the GlassFish project. But I really do think that GlassFish (and specifically the modular v3 architecture) has really been grabbing some attention here at JavaOne. And if you aren't here to see Jerome's demonstration in person, don't worry--you can get similar information from his recent v3 screencast.

Tags: glassfish glassfishv3 javaone modularization

Posted at 01:42PM May 09, 2007 by Jamey Wood in GlassFish  |  Comments[0]

Building "SDN Share"

If you read my entry from earlier today, you know that we've launched a new program called SDN Share. It's a place where developers can share technical information with other developers and, in the process, earn some nice rewards (Amazon gift certificates).

Well we've now received our first bit of outside feedback. It came from Alan McClellan, who posted this comment on our SDN Share blog:

This is a cool site. How did you build it? It it home grown or did you use purchased or open source discussion/forum software?

Thanks, Alan. I'd been looking for an excuse to talk about this. :)

We implemented SDN Share by skinning and slightly modifying an existing piece of software called Slynkr. It's a Java implementation of a web-based service which allows anyone to submit items and then lets anyone else tag, vote, and comment on them (collectively forming what's often called a Social News or Social Bookmarking service).

Going back to the original question of whether this is home-grown or open source software... It's both. Okay, that isn't quite true--but I think it's safe to say that it will be soon. We're well into the process of getting Slynkr released as open source software. So you might want to keep an eye out wherever great open source Java software is created.

Tags: community content development sdn sdnshare slynkr sun

Posted at 02:56PM Apr 26, 2007 by Jamey Wood in Web 2.0  |  Comments[0]

Sharing "SDN Share"

Developers are changing. Every day, it seems that interacting with the outside world becomes a larger and larger part of the job. We interact via open source projects, mailing lists, forums, blogs, journals, and more.

As developers change, it's only natural that tech companies' developer programs also change. In our case, that means the Sun Developer Network (SDN). It's always been a great program, providing a ton of information to developers. But one place where it could improve is in getting more information from developers.

That's why we're starting a new branch of this program, called SDN Share. In short, it's a place where developers can share technical content with other developers. Have a snippet of code that solves a common problem? Share it. A script which lets you avoid mundane tasks? Share it. An article which takes the mystery out of some new technology? That's right: Share it.

Once a submission has been accepted, anyone can add to it with some sharing of their own. They can comment on it, tag it, and vote on whether they think it's great or needs some work. This makes the best stuff float to the top, the Java stuff clump together with other Java stuff, and the occasional error get pointed out and corrected. You know--standard Web 2.0 and Participation Age stuff. Kudos to the Diggs, del.icio.uses, and Wikipedias of the world (and others) who came before us in popularizing and evolving these ideas.

I almost forgot the best part--the rewards. You receive points when your submission is accepted and when people vote for it. These rewards can be exchanged for cash which is deposited into a communal account shared by all SDN Share members. Then someday when enough cash has accrued, we will fulfill the longstanding dream of buying the world a Coke.

JUST KIDDING. This touchy-feely sharing stuff has to end somewhere, right? The rewards are Amazon gift certificates, and they're yours to hoard or spend in any way you like. The "How it Works" page provides details on how you get rewards points, and the "Redeeming Points" page explains how you can use them.

So what are you waiting for? I know you have little tidbits lying around that make you a better developer. You might as well share them and earn some free stuff, right? Also, keep an eye on the SDN Share Blog for more information on the program.

Tags: community content development sdn sdnshare slynkr sun

Posted at 11:29AM Apr 26, 2007 by Jamey Wood in Web 2.0  |  Comments[0]

Help Duke and Sparky!

Wired is running a feature looking for the Lamest Technology Mascots Ever. Despite its "lamest" title, the feature describes itself as "a tour of the good, the bad and the ridiculously lame of technology mascots." So I suppose I shouldn't be too upset to see inclusions which I think are good mascots--such as the Mozilla Lizard, Tux the Penguin, and Duke the ... (Curvy Triangle?).

They also include a poll where readers can vote on which mascots they like and dislike. So if you're a Duke fan (like me), go vote for him. And while you're there, I hope you'll also share your opinion of Sparky (our mascot for Project GlassFish). He wasn't in Wired's original list, but I submitted him (since I really do think he's a great mascot, capturing the spirit of an open source project like GlassFish).

Note that you may need to hit the "Next" link in the polling page a few times to find Duke and Sparky. Or you can go straight to the raw poll at reddit, which shows more of the mascots at once.

Update -- this note has been added to the poll: "Clarification: Click the GREEN ARROW for mascots you think are LAME and should be moved to the TOP of the list. Click the RED ARROW for mascots you think should move DOWN the list and should be rated LESS LAME. Sorry about the confusion!" So I suppose that we all need to vote against Duke and Sparky if we like them. Lovely. Maybe I should change this entry's title to "Help Wired Figure Out How to Word a Poll!"

Tags: duke glassfish java logos mascots sparky

Posted at 10:58AM Apr 25, 2007 by Jamey Wood in Potpourri  |  Comments[1]

When Does the Real Privacy Backlash Arrive?

Big Brother is coming. And we're welcoming him. He's hiding in our email, our web searches, the banner ads that annoy us, and our kids' MySpace pages (that frighten us). But most of all, he's hiding in plain sight. You see, Big Brother isn't coming from secret government agencies shrouded behind dark tinted windows. He's coming from colorful buildings filled with bright young programmers who have whimsical company logos on their business cards.

I've written about this before. And now Google's agreement to purchase DoubleClick has gotten more people thinking about the company's privacy impact. Why? Because Google is gaining an even larger window into everyone's online activities. Rich Tehrani estimated that if the acquisition is completed, Google could end up with "access to the behavioral information of over 90% of web users".

Tehrani also provides examples of just how this data can be used, such as quoting a Yahoo executive who brags that his company can now "predict with 75% certainty which of the 300,000 monthly visitors to Yahoo! Autos will purchase a new car within the next three months."

So a handful of web giants are amassing thorough records of our online activities and learning how to turn that data into a full picture of our behavior (and likely future behavior). Scary stuff. Still, it doesn't feel like the general public really cares. Yet.

We haven't yet seen real public outcry and backlash against these privacy threats. Part of that is because the companies involved have good reputations (and deservedly so, in most cases). Part is because most of us assume that only "bad people" with something to hide have reason to worry about privacy. But these are just delaying the backlash, not preventing it.

At some point, a catalyst will grab the attention of the general public. It could be a security breach at one of the web giants, exposing so much information about so many people that we can't ignore it. Or it could be the story of how lost privacy has ruined one individual's life, told in such a way that we can't forget it.

I don't know what that event will be or when it will happen. But I do know it's coming. The giants of the Internet are on a collision course with the privacy of the little guy. And when it happens, it won't just be the privacy watchdogs that are complaining.

Tags: doubleclick google privacy yahoo

Posted at 09:41AM Apr 24, 2007 by Jamey Wood in Privacy  |  Comments[3]

A Look Behind NBC's Heroes

NBC's Heroes is a favorite of mine. I follow the show itself pretty closely, but had never read anything about its background or creators. But today a Wired Article caught my eye and changed that.

It's got some interesting tidbits. For one, the show's creator has never really read or liked comic books. But actor Masi Oka (who plays the "Hiro" character) more than compensates for that. The article describes him as "a geek made good." Why? "Before he pursued acting, he was a CG artist at Industrial Light & Magic, crafting f/x for films like War of the Worlds and Revenge of the Sith."

Oka sounds pretty talented. They should let him do his character's own special effects. Then they could bill him as the first mainstream actor to do his own digital stunts--a new-millennium version of Jackie Chan, you might say.

Tags: comics heroes nbc television

Posted at 05:29PM Apr 23, 2007 by Jamey Wood in Potpourri  |  Comments[0]