OSGi without the Eclipse
It's become common to equate OSGi with Eclipse or Equinox, but in fact other OSGi implementations exist. This post from JW blogger Oleg Mikheev fills a much needed gap - walking through the process of developing a Hello World bundle with Apache Felix and the IDE of your choice.

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Best and worst of JavaOne 2002

A break down of the JavaOne 2002 electric boogaloo

By John D. Mitchell, JavaWorld.com, 04/02/02

Page 2 of 4

Hands-down best keynote

By far, Paul Saffo, from the Institute for the Future, gave the most interesting of all keynotes. The core of his talk centered around the notion that we're really in the Age of (Emergent) Media. Judging by the enthusiastic applause, apparently many audience members felt as I did. I don't want to slight his presentation by paraphrasing or excerpting it, so go directly to Sun's Website and view the Webcast!

Scariest push for ID smart cards

Rich Green's, Sun vice president and general manager of the Java and XML Platform, keynote pushed JavaCard-based identification solutions along with the Liberty Alliance. The video presentation was funny: Green disses a (bad) Bill Gates look-alike wearing a .Not T-shirt by choosing James Gosling over Gates to join him at a concert. But the video focused only on the seductive capabilities and skirted the very serious privacy issues attendant with any such systems.

Best embrace-and-extend play

In Monday's technical keynote, Sun talked a lot about Java's support for the full gamut of Web services. Sun used VisualStudio .Net to build a Web service client to a Java-based Web service. Now you can feel free to aggressively refute anybody who thinks that .Net will somehow cut Java out of the market. The more that (open) standards and implementations are available, the less of a stranglehold Microsoft can exert upon the world.

Best pun

"JavaWon" by Sun CEO Scott McNealy in talking about the battle of "Mankind Vs. the Monopolist."

Best hack on Bill Gates

Coming into the show, McNealy was the odds-on favorite in this category. His Tuesday keynote hack on Gates was shtick that poor Scott couldn't retire from Sun anytime soon because "I can't leave my kids to Ctrl-Alt-Del." (Yeah, like with most jokes, you had to be there.)

However, on Thursday night, Wayne Brady of Whose Line Is It Anyway? fame easily snagged the prize during his "gangsta rap" improvisation, based on a line from an audience member referring to "...going through the Bill Gates of Hell."

Best entertainer

Again, Brady. If you haven't seen him do his amazing musical improvisation, you should check out his show on Thursday nights (ABC) at 8 p.m. eastern/7 p.m. central. Alas, given this is a PG-rated magazine, I can't describe the most hilarious skits. However, I will say that I now have a whole new view of just what "package protection" means.

Given the crowd reaction, this was as big a hit as Dana Carvey's keynote all too many years ago.

Note to show organizers: Book a (good) comedian for every show! Hint: For next year's show, bring in the Blue Man Group!

Best gadget

The Sharp Zaurus PDA was this year's JavaOne gadget gimmick. The cost: US99 for the developer version (basically the same as the commercial version, but with 32MB RAM instead of 64MB); the original is US99. The device runs an embedded version of Linux and contains a PersonalJava JRE (Java Runtime Environment).

However, the particularly cool thing this year was that you could buy a wireless card for the PDA (US00) that would hook into the 802.11b network that Sun set up for the show. To wirelessly browse the Internet while sitting through boring sessions or wandering around the show floor was great.

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