Öredev 2008: Sun SPOT, Buglabs, Sun Java ME SDK , Benefits of Open Source Development etc

The first day of Öredev 2008 is over. It has been an interesting day, with many new impressions. There are a lot of exciting things happening within the Java ME community right now. The Java ME platform is becoming available on a numerous platforms and in different flavors. I really liked the Sun SPOT device when it was announced at JavaOne 2006, and the BUG demonstration today was impressive. Both these devices triggers a real "must have now" feeling. If you ever had the opportunity to try out the Sun SPOT, you know what I mean.

Sun SPOT in action at the Waygroup stand. The robot is about to knock down the Jayway mug.

I must remind you all that Microlog works on Sun SPOT out-of-the-box, and has some special classes for Sun SPOT development. These classes are merged from the Microlog4SPOT project.

Another new attention-grabbing technology is the JavaFX framework. Before the presentation I did not have deep knowledge of what it was, but now I think that I have grasped the vital parts of JavaFX. It could be seen as a new Java platform that is put on top of the existing Java platform. It is kind of write once, run everywhere but with a new twist. Looking forward to try it out.

A tool I would like to try out is the new Sun Java ME SDK. It is available as an early access release today. According to the people from Sun the 1.0 release should be available in the beginning of 2009. The new Java ME SDK is a combination of the Sun Wireless Toolkit and the CDC Toolkit. It has been re-worked and uses the Netbeans framework as its foundation. The aim is to have a tool that is useful for all Java ME development. As such it has support for Blu-ray development.

There was also a session about LWUIT, the new UI Toolkit from Sun. It could be used as a better version of the LCDUI. It is inspired by the Swing toolkit, but for Java ME. Please take a look at my article about the LWUIT Makeover demo. I believe there will be reasons to watch out for LWUIT.

Here are some additional pictures from Öredev 2008:

A couple of minutes before the first keynote speech with Ted Neward from ThoughtWorks.

The official Microlog t-shirt. This is a limited edition only used by a couple of developers in the world.

All the mugs knocked out. Again we see the Sun SPOT in action.

A LEGO Mindstorm NXT waiting for some action.

Some advantages of Open Source Software in development.

Some more advantages of Open Source Software in development.