Javaone day 4-the toy show

The Friday morning general session is something to look forward to
Every javaone, and this year was no exception. The reason is because
James Gosling runs it, and he brings up people to show some of
Neatest uses of Java technology you 've ever heard of; and this year's
"Toy show" was no exception.

This year's show was a bit
Different because it combined the traditional toy show with the Duke's
Choice Awards. Integrating the two meant that it wasn' t as fast-paced,
With one awesome Gizmo or software demo after another, but it also
Meant that the Duke's Choice Award Winners got a bigger audience
They might have and developers got a look at some things they might
Have otherwise missed out on.

Ari zilka, representing
Terracotta, accepted the first Duke's Choice Award for their work in
Making it simpler to scale Java applications.

Brendan
Humphreys, of Atlassian, accepted the next award for clover, a testing
Tool that extends Java developers use to check code coverage as part
Their continuous integration process. The new version also allows you
To run just the tests for the areas affected by the code change that
Triggered the build.

The bluej/greenfoot team, represented
Ian Utting and Paul Henriksen, was brought on stage and James wished
Them a Happy Birthday. For ten years bluej has been used to teach Java
Programming to children (and adults) in universities and schools around
The Globe.

Mark Gerhard, CEO of jarex the makers of runescape,
Brought a fast motion video showing how they create and test creatures
For runescape. It turns out that jarex has written their own version
Maya of max3d in Java to allow them to model, and test, and deploy
Creatures and other content for runescape.

Simon Ritter and
Angela caceido, both technology evangalists with sun, gave us a good
Look at what you can do with Java/javafx, a Wii remote, some wood, and
A helping of innovative thinking. Go watch the video on this.
Especially Angela's simplified version of the UI from the movie
"Minority Report"-it'll leave you with the desire to go out and build
One yourself.

Tor norbye, Principal Engineer with sun and
Member of the Java posse, gave us a better look at the javafx authoring
Tool. While it's not yet in Beta, I was impressed with the capabilities
Tor displayed and how easy it makes creating a UI using javafx. You can
Even pull up multiple views (representing what the screen will look
Like on different devices) and tweak them individually to deal
Different screen sizes your application will encounter. If you're
Interested in javafx development, I recommend keeping an eye out
The release of this tool.

Brad Miller, associate director
The robotics resource center at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute,
And Derek white, Staff Engineer at Sun, accepted the next Duke's choice
Award for his work on the first robotics competition. Brad brought
Members of the winning team and their robot to demonstrate a little
What first is about, and Derek showed the robot being controlled
Java code executing on his laptop in the netbeans debugger. previusly,
The controlling code was written in C/C ++ but this year the Code's been
Ported to Java and anybody interested in helping kids learn Java is
Encouraged to get involved. Check out www.usforst.org for more details.

There's a lot more that went on, including a look at limit VI's
Visual search engine, Manuel tijerino's jukebox for startup bands, and
Neil Young's entry in the Automotive x prize competition-a 6,000
Pound 1959 Lincoln Continental that runs on Atomicity. Go check out
The video at http://java.sun.com/javaone/2009/general_sessions.jsp

Burk Hufnagel, reporting for dzone