As the first day of the conference I had to get there, get registered and try to figure out where the hell I am supposed to go. This all happened today. :-) I made it into the general session a little after 8:30 and I got to hear Rich Green, executive vice president of software for Sun Microsystems give a pretty good talk and have a few demos done. He first brought up someone from Ericsson who talked about their work with Sun to open source the Sun Java System Communications Application Server, an application server complete with a multimedia information management system (IMS). They even showed a video about a family (Mother, Father, bratty teen) all using their cell phones and mobile devices to essentially ignore each other. I really like the part where the mom was writing a text message while driving. Talk about encouraging safe driving habits. Another good part was where a kid was trying to watch a rated R movie on their laptop and the laptop automatically text messaged the mom and dad asking if it was ok for the kid to watch that movie. They said no and the kid looked bummed out and closed the laptop lid. Yeah right. Keep dreaming... They also announced JavaFX which is essentially a new scripting language that do most of what you can do with AJAX or Flash. It has other benefits that you can read about here. I'll play around with it but I've got a few other scripting languages on my list to learn before I try to do any serious work with it. My favorite part of the opening keynote was having Scott McNeely talk about a new educational website that would eventually have all the curriculum from k - 12 for free. Not suprisingly it is www.curriki.org. I guess I just have a soft spot for using technology to try to educate kids and give them more oppurtunities to learn. As for the regular sessions here are the sessions along with some of my notes:
Packaging JavaApps For Ubuntu::
Nothing too earth shattering here, it just went over how you get your java application packaged into Ubuntu's repository so people can install it very easily (sudo apt-get install myapplication). They used GlassFish as an example along with lessons learned while getting it ready.
The basic rules of thumb are:
1. Decide the number of packages.
2. Choose your license.
3. Identify component to deliver to.
4. Identify dependencies (both build time and runtime).
Some of the lessions learned by the GlassFish team were:
1. Break software into discrete components.
2. Figure out licensing.
3. Package all build dependencies.
4. Don't rely on graphical setup tools.
5. Build package for default using Ant.
Overall I thought it was useful because at some point I would like to package IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition to be easily installed and updated within Ubuntu. I'll probably just have to do all the work and just ask for permission to deploy it instead of asking if I can work on it. Such is life.
Web Algorithms::
Overall a cool and entertaining speech covering 5 handy dandy web algorithms. They are:
1. XOR Swap
2. Credit Card Validation
3. Public Key Cryptography
4. Two's Complement
5. Google Map Reduce
The speaker went through examples of each along with walking through code snippets in java and other programming languages. All in all it was a fun geekfest.
A Step Along the Way: Using AJAX, Portals, and Services for Better Network Management::
This one was probably the most boring even though it didn't need to be. It was a talk about how Nortel is using AJAX, portals, and SOA infrastructure to create applications that allow them to more easily manage their network infrastructure. Cool from a functionality perspective but not super exciting. The speaker didn't help much since he spoke softly and in monotone the whole time.