Friday 5 – JavaOne Edition

A pretty hectic week by Java’s standards, but we always knew it would be. As seemingly the entire developer community descended upon San Francisco for JavaOne, we saw the glitz and glamour of the keynotes, the ridiculously top-draw band lineup, a few grown men in mascot costumes and a lot of partying if the #javaone hashtag was anything to go by.

There were a few noteworthy announcements, but nothing major as some expected. But we’re still in good spirits, here’s our particularly JavaOne themed Friday Five.

1. The Music Undercard 

We get that musicians get paid a sizable chunk of money to appear at tech conferences, but Oracle really pushed the boat out this year for Oracle OpenWorld’s first music festival. On the diverse and international undercard, we had reggae royalty in Jimmy Cliff, songstresses Macy Gray and Joss Stone, and Swedish rockers The Hives wound things up. We had to select one of Jamaica’s finest however, with one of the tracks he’s best known for…

2. The Headliners that weren’t Mark Reinhold and James Gosling

Great show in San Fran with Pearl Jam. Eddie came up and sang The Bucket with us. Always an honor to share the stage with them. #Heroes

— Jared Followill (@youngfollowill) October 4, 2012

We’ve not even touched upon the two bands who headlined proceedings, Pearl Jam (save the jokes about them and Java last being relevant in the 90s) and Kings of Leon. Even the music press clocked onto Eddie Vedder joining the Nashville quartet for The Bucket. Perhaps that’s the sort of press Oracle were trying to get with their Music Festival. IDG claimed that most of the people they spoke to were too busy for the music festivities. Still looked like a packed house at Treasure Island for Mr Vedder and co.

3. Giving up on Eclipse Juno

We’ve seen the blogposts and developer mailing lists about Eclipse’s 4.2 platform, most of which have been scathingly negative. The Eclipse Foundation in turn had urged the community to come forward and help contribute in whatever way they could. Here’s Dan Haywood’s views on the ailing platform and why he’s gone back to 3.x series. Let’s hope things improve in the coming months, or Eclipse might end up with more angry developers.

4. Boxing Bots thanks to Kinect

It’s always cool to see inventive ideas through hacking the Kinect (we’ll be seeing a few more ways to do that at JAX London in a week’s time).

Here’s an in-depth overview of one team’s Kinect project for SXSW: creating lifesize rock’em sock’em robots that use the Kinect’s motion sensors. Ok, you may be thinking of that Hugh Jackman vehicle Real Steel, but this is real! Well worth a read to see the challenges faced in hardware, software and interaction.

5. That Java Welcoming Video

This opening video from JavaOne is bound to split opinion. Some will love the references to Runescape and Minecraft, as well as its jovial spirit. We suspect that many more will find it a cheesy music video that shouldn’t have seen the light of day. We think it’s quite cute and we should just enjoy James Gosling drinking a cup of coffee. Questionable ‘movements’ from others though.

That was our irreverant lookback at the week that was – we hope it’s helped you get over the post-gathering depression. Alternatively, listen to Pearl Jam some more.