Josh On Design

A few days ago we released the code to Aerith, our JavaOne demo that combines photos, mapdata, and 3d effects. We worked very hard to get the code out to you and let you see how everything works. However, if you've downloaded the code you may have noticed that the code for the map parts is missing. Only the binaries are provided in the JXMapViewer.jar file. That's because the map component has a brighter future than just a JavaOne demo. It is now the first component in our new SwingLabs project: The Swing Web Services components, or SwingX-WS.

It look more work than expected (doesn't everything?) but at long last we have released the source code to Aerith, our killer 2d/3d/webservices mashup demo that we showed at the JavaOne 2006 keynote, and later in the SwingLabs booth and at the Apple BoF. The response to the demo was very positive so we made a commitment to release the code ASAP. Finally that day has arrived and it's today. Go download the code at the new Aerith homepage.

So you have probably wondered where I've been. Possibly even missed me. Or maybe you haven't and are glad I haven't wasted any of your precious packets during the last month. In either case: I'm back with lots of interesting things on the way. I've been on vacation, traveling, spending time with family, and then back on the job working on Aerith and getting Mustang ready for Vista. So let's dive in to the good stuff:

I just arrived home after a both grueling and exciting week of JavaOne. I'm taking the next two weeks off, though I will be blogging a bit and answering the occasional emails. Don't be surprised if I'm a bit slow to respond though as I'll be in Oregon most of the time sipping coffee and enjoying the beautiful outdoors.

I'm sitting in the audience watching Tuesday's keynote where Romain Guy and Richard Bair are on stage showing the new Swing demo we built called Aerith. It's a roadtrip slideshow builder that combines Google Maps, Flickr, and Yahoo Geocode to let you make your own slideshow of photos you took on your trip. Once you are doing setting up the slideshow you can share the trip with your friends as an applet.

I'm doing lots of pre-JavaOne work right now and I could easily bore you with details of our Java.net Community Leaders meeting on Saturday, but instead I'll tease you with our demo.

We are getting closer to JavaOne and companies are preparing to announce their latest and greatest products. We will also have lots of discussions of Java vs AJAX vs Flash vs other hot tech of the day. Before we go down these and other rabbit hole discussions I'd like to take a moment to sit back and look at the big picture: Why are we here?

I'm going to be a complete nerd for a second and expound upon how amazingly cool it is that something I wrote has been translated into Japanese. I mean, writing down words that someone else pays for is cool and all, but it's even cooler when someone else translates my words into another language. The book even looks cooler. It's a tad smaller and has a very nice book jacket. The paper has a very different feel from the english printing; manga-esque actually.

I'm sure I'm the last Mac Java developer here to figure this out so I'm posting it not so much for you but for future generations intrepid googlers to find.

I'm always amazed by how big the Java ecosystem is. It really is a global community. When Chris and I wrote Swing Hacks we did it out of love for Swing, not to sell a lot of copies or make a lot of money. I'm always amazed when someone will pay for something I've written. When we hit an Amazon score of under 1000 (for a couple of hours anyway) I was bowled over.

This is totally off topic for Java, but I need to rant about computers for a second.