I couldn’t attend this year, but many of JavaOne’s sessions are available for viewing here.

Rafe wonders why Sun didn’t use what was already available when building java.net: “I’m always curious about is why big companies tend to either stomp on or ignore existing communities and conventions when they try something new.” Me too.

I think Sun missed an opportunity, especially when services like Roller and java.blogs exist, work great, and have enthusiastic users.

I gotta add however, I am very happy to see it come online. It already looks to become a regular visit.

Update: Simon Phipps, Sun Java evangelist, answers some of Rafe’s questions!

Watching this evolve is going to be fun. Sun’s weblogs may look generic, but a cross-weblog conversation just may take place here! That’s great!

It’s great news for Java developers.

It looks like Sun’s new java.net community portal may become the place for open source Java development and project hosting. Bears watching…

CNet: Merrill Lynch: Linux saves money. Gotta love that quote.

Moved my blogroll page to Philly Blogs page and reorganzied that page. Having two weblog listings on seperate pages was giving me a headache 🙂 This should help to drive more traffic to the other Philly weblogs too.

Eric M. Burke at weblogs.oreilly.com: on the art of writing simple, concise code. Need to take up that book suggestion: “The Pragmatic Programmer: from journeyman to master”, by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas.

From a fan perspective, of course I’m going to dig Blabbermouth.net. But the web-tech guy in me wants you to take notice – the site gets a topic based weblog right. Straight forward design. Sticks to to subject. Content right were you can see it. Notice how Road Runner records owns the site, but is not responsible for content. And notice how I just gave Road Runner free advertisement. It’s great work. Check it out.

I would be amiss if I didn’t mention BlogCritics contributor, metal (true metal dude) fan and critic, fellow Philly blogger Chirs Puzak. I wouldn’t have known about Blabbermouth if it wasn’t for him pointing to it. All this and a fellow “The Prisoner” fan too!

CNet: Sun opens up Java process while it is about to release a new tool that is targeted at Visual Basic developers. Finally. But this maybe too little too late? Hopefully not.

In the meantime checkout what’s in store for release 1.5.

Well someone made it easy!

1. Download and install this bundled build of GCC/GCJ 3.3 for Windows (MingW) and SWT. Follow the instructions to put into your path it’s bin directory.

2. Create your simple HelloWorld app as HelloWorld.java:

class HelloWorld {

public static void main(String args[]) {

System.out.println("Hello World");

return;

}

3. Navigate to that directory from a command prompt and type:
>gcj –main=HelloWorld -o HelloWorld HelloWorld.java

4. Now execute your HelloWorld.exe:
>HelloWorld

It runs! The executable is a little larger then I had hoped (3.5MB), but that beats telling users they need a JVM installed! More about it in this JavaLobby thread. I write many non-GUI utilities and this maybe just the trick for some of them. This originates with the article I linked to earlier at IBMDeveloperWorks, Create native, cross-platform GUI applications, revisited.