Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose...damn, isn't this the best time of the year! Ironically, the actual event on the 25th isn't that memorable, but the lead up to this day is what gets me all fired up. And this year, I have two special celebrations. ...

To help cut the cost of travel in today's economy, I flew ATA from Philadelphia to San Francisco last weekend. You know, if you live within the constraints defined by these airlines, it's not really a bad way to go. Of course, you travel in a full plane (and I mean packed to the brim),...

Much of Sun's emphasis lately has been on server-side and J2ME technologies, and many industry pundits have predicted death knells for client-side Java. This makes some sense. Let's look at some J2SE facts: The initial versions of Java Virtual Machines (JVMs) were bug-laden, slow, and ...

After what seems like months of waiting (and it probably has been), a color mobile phone (as opposed to a PDA/phone combination) has finally appeared on the British market. With a 101x80 pixel 256-color STN display, an e-mail application, calendar, games, and PC synchronization, it has...

This month the whole JDJ crew, minus Mr. Briggs, was at the Hilton in central Manhattan for our JDJEdge conference. It was a great show with much discussion regarding the state of our industry and where it's heading. As usual the old 'Web services' debate was high on everyone's agenda,...

First things first: I'd like to take a moment to reflect upon SYS-CON's JDJEdge Conference in light of the tragedy that shocked America on September 11. The best way to deal with a terrorist act is to not give in and allow it to disrupt everyday activities. To that effect, JDJEdge took...

Stop the presses! Clear the rain forests! The Merlin books are coming! The Merlin books are coming! This thing is huge and the books will keep getting bigger. Forget about thin clients. The runtime class libraries alone have jumped from 13.5MB in the 1.3 release to 22MB with the new ve...

A big date in the European gamer's calendar is the European Con- sumer Trade Show (ECTS) in London. It's a time for 16-year old boys to polish up their fake IDs, dust off the letters confirming their internship at a large game publisher (printed earlier in the week on letterhead paper ...

Last month I wrote on the Microsoft issues with their impending release of Windows XP. I intended to go a whole editorial without mentioning that software company, but because of the amount of e-mail I received, I have to do something.

I've come to the conclusion that Japan is the place to live. Not that I really want to move to a country that by all reports is an extremely crowded and busy place, but the Japanese always seem to get the best gadgets.

I recently got the security card for entering our Pennsylvania offices. The badge attaches to a hook that's linked to the string that goes around my neck so I can carry the badge at all times. I'm sure you know the type of setup I'm talking about. The JavaOne badges handed out this yea...

This is the time of year when most people take their vacation...when productivity falls a little below the yearly average...when nothing exciting happens. Mainstream journalists call it the 'silly season'...the time when they usually have to dredge up all those human interest stories a...

They say no man is an island. For J2EE I would say no platform is the universe. Sometimes folks misunderstand the promise of J2EE. It won't replace every other development paradigm. J2EE application servers won't make all other deployment and runtime environments obsolete. And Java won...

A new business cycle is sweeping the Internet technology world, one that now demands that companies start competing with each other, not only for new customers, but also - and perhaps even more crucially in a time of shrinking revenues - to retain the ones they have.

If the computer industry was a cat fight, right now fur would be flying in every direction. Microsoft's recent decision to drop Java from their Windows XP distribution is a prime case in point. Spin merchants pop up left, right, and center to fire a barrage of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, a...

At last we can return to sanity. The speeches are over, the bunting is down, and the mad hysteria is at an end. After the chaos of JavaOne we can return to normal. I am of course paraphrasing that great literary character Edmund Blackadder. It has now been a month since I arrived home ...

We live in a world where abstraction is the name of the game. I used to be an avid reader of Asterix comics, and thinking of abstraction reminds me of a couple of panels in the 'Obelix & Co.' comic book. A Roman emissary tries to explain to the (simpleton) Obelix the intricacies of Rom...

There's an old joke: 'It's not progress I'm against, it's just change that I loathe!' This isn't one you hear told very often in Internet technology circles! But Sanjay Sarathy is right. As he says in his 'Guest Editorial' at the front of the issue, it would be easy to feel sym...

If you've ever spent time in the Middle East, you'll know that bargaining is a way of life. You haggle over everything, especially if you're a tourist - they automatically triple and quadruple the price if you're a foreigner. So it doesn't seem that unusual to be arguing over the price...

It's an odd sensation when you're wandering around and everyone immediately looks at your chest. (No, I don't have a strange growth protruding from my sternum.) I recently visited the Embedded Systems Show (ESS) in London. The offending item, attracting all the attention, was the print...

Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair...as the classic Scott McKenzie song advised. What sound advice that is since last month thousands of Java developers made the annual pilgrimage to JavaOne at the Moscone Center. We were there, the JDJ crew, covering the event, talking to all w...

I just got back from JavaOne in San Francisco this weekend. My humble opinions on the conference are presented elsewhere in this issue of JDJ. As expected, one of the main themes of JavaOne this year was the J2EE platform and related technologies. Over the last two years, since Sun ann...

One of the joys of Java is that it never seems to lose its capacity to surprise. This has been true ever since its debut at one of the earliest DEMO conferences, one of the most dynamic and interactive gigs in the whole technology industry.

It has been one hell of a journey to get where we are today. What you're holding in your hands is the first of the new breed of Java Developer's Journal. On behalf of the team here, allow me to introduce JDJ 2.0.

Welcome to the first-ever session of JDJ's International Advisory Panel. This is where we look into the crystal ball and turn to the industry gurus to determine where Java is heading.

As Alan Williamson, JDJ's editor-in-chief, mentioned earlier in this issue, JDJ 2.0 is a total redesign of JDJ; our intention is to reflect the developments in the Java platform as closely as we can. Some of you may be familiar with my role in JDJ - I wrote a column, E-Java, and was on...

Dealing with dates and times is probably the most confusing aspect of Java for newbies. There are three reasons for this:

Technology seems at times to proceed at a breakneck pace. The downside to this expectation for a consistently high rate of technological improvement is that at other times, progress comes at a more leisurely pace - analogous to watching paint dry or sloth racing.

My column two months ago, 'Sunset on the Evil Empire,' stirred up a great deal of controversy. Part of it was my fault, as I was trying to make two distinct points in the article, and that elicited a great deal of excitement directed at one point or the other. My first point, which I m...

Last month when I sat down to write this editorial I had the good fortune to be staring out at the Golden Gate Bridge. Sadly, this month the view isn't quite as romantic; I'm sitting approximately 12 inches away from an elderly lady who has decided to push her seat back, reducing my ai...

This is my first note to let everyone know about the plans for our very own, SYS-CON-sponsored JavaEdge2001 International Java Developer Conference & Expo. This year's conference will be held in New York City from September 23 to September 26. As a corporation, SYS-CON has committed to...

I'm sitting here cross-legged on a fresh San Francisco afternoon, 8,000 miles away from my family, wondering how the industry we live and breath in is shaping up. When I left Scotland, it was the weekend and the American markets didn't have too much to report. After a 9-hour flight, la...

Maybe I don't understand marketing concepts. It seems to me that advertising one of your products as 13 times more reliable than another of your products is not the optimal approach. In my mind, you'd want to emphasize its reliability compared to your competitors' products. But hey, no...

You may have noticed a slight change in this month's editorial: namely, me. Don't be alarmed; it's all under control. Like many a good piece of software, the trick is never to assume that what you have will continue to be what you need. Reinvention is paramount to keep ahead in what ca...

You see personalization and targeted marketing all over the web. Almost every commerce site offers you the opportunity to set up your own favorites, rearrange their home page to suit your tastes, and be remembered when you come to their site. Every site I visit allows me to set up ...

One of the nice things about working for a large consulting company is that I have access to our strategic services department. These are the people who help develop strategies for our clients and research industry trends and conditions. I recently spoke with a few of our folks who are...

Linux is one of the operating systems I run in my basement in what my wife likes to call the computer lab from hell. That may be because the heat from all the obsolete equipment I collect is reducing my fuel bill and keeping the place toasty and warm. Linux is one of three UNIX variant...

Unless you've been stranded on a re- mote government testing station in outermost Mongolia, you'll know that the new kid on the block is sticking around and making some serious inroads on corporate America. I am, of course, talking of Linux, and with that, welcome to the Linux Focus Is...

There's a project team out there that really hates me. I was called in recently to help them get their application together so it could be put into production. When I got there, I determined that the problem was simple - no one understood configuration management.

This year's battle in the technology field resembles an election year – people are choosing sides and leveraging their power. The big decision for developers will be selecting a protocol to build into their smart devices. Each camp has its pundits and its naysayers. Sun and Micro...