Adnan Turić: January 2008

The NetBeans Innovators Grant

As a part of Sun Microsystems initiative for open source developers, the NetBeans Innovators Grant gives opportunity to get your ideas into real projects, and to get some money. 10 large projects will be awarded with US$ 11,500 and 10 small projects with US$ 2,000.
Deadlines
Submissions open - February 1, 2008
Submissions deadline - March 3, 2008
Judges announce the winning projects that will receive the grants - April 1, 2008
Final project deadline - August 4, 2008
Judges announce possible extra grant money - September 1, 2008

If you would like to participate, get more informations at Netbeans pages.

Java in 2008

In transition from one year to another, there is always huge number comparisons of technologies and prediction for new age. What to take serious?! Seems like most of us, who are 'in love' with some technologies, seeking for something which would confirm our interests and hopes.
But, there is one interesting comparison of java development to read. From my point, the great contribution to java based technologies in past year came from Google's Android project. I don't want to downgrade java fx, and other, but, what google touch, became flourish:)

Winners of the Developer.com - 2008

Developer.com announced Product of the Year 2008 in eleven categories. Here are the results of televoting, Malta 10 points :) just joking :) Reason of this post is significant victory of NetBeans ID.
Nominated and winners are listed (categories and winners are bold, of course):

Technology:
* Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX)
* Service Oriented Architecture
* Rich Internet Applications (RIA)
* W3C® Semantic Web
* Web 2.0

Framework
* Hibernate
* Java SE 6
* Microsoft® .NET
* Ruby on RailsTM
* Spring 2

Development Tool
* IntelliJ 7
* MyEclipse
* NetBeans IDE
* Nexaweb Studio
* Subversion

Development Utility
* Apache Ant
* Eclipse Business Intelligence Reporting Tools
* Eclipse Mylyn
* Firefox®
* Parasoft SOAtest

Web Service Development Tool or Add-in
* EBayTM Developer's Program and API
* Salesforce's Force.com®
* GoogleTM Maps API
* Project jMaki
* Microsoft® Windows Communication Foundation

Wireless/Mobile Development Tool or Add-in
* Dreamweaver® CS3
* Microsoft® SilverlightTM
* NetBeans Mobility Pack
* Nokia Carbide
* Sun Java Wireless Toolkit

Database Tool or Add-in
* Hibernate
* Java DB
* MySQL
* Oracle Database 10g
* PostgreSQL

Java Tool or Add-in
* Eclipse IDE
* Java Applet plug-in
* JRuby
* Maven
* NetBeans IDE

JSR (Java Specification Request)
* JSR 223: Scripting for the Java Platform
* JSR 241: The Groovy Programming Language
* JSR 249: Mobile Service Architecture 2
* JSR 277: Java Module System
* JSR 318: Enterprise JavaBeans 3.1

.NET Tool or Add-in
* Enterprise Library for .NET Framework 2.0
* Glassfish Web Services Interoperability Technology
* Microsoft® Expression BlendTM
* Microsoft® SilverlightTM
* Visual SVN

Open Source Tool
* Apache Wicket
* Java SE 6
* JBoss Application Server
* NetBeans IDE
* Subversion

More detailed informations you can find on developers.com

Which web framework to use?

If you are programmer, probably you are programming web and "win" like application. It's simple to choose what you'll use in "win" like application development. Now we have also popular javaFX framework. But, which framework you'll use in web application development? There are, opposite to stand alone applications, a lot of frameworks for web development. Most popular are Ruby on Rails, Struts, JSF, Spring MVC, Stripes, Tapestry...etc. Which side you'll take up? Every programmer, besides personal interests, want to know "does taking this skill, I would have a job opportunities in next month, year? Is this 'experimental' technology, which wouldn't be useful very soon?". Many of these questions, you cannot know, and you need to define your project goals, and little bit explore on the web, which framework could satisfy your project needs. Define your goals, and analyze possibilities. If you don't have time, or nerves to do so, than start your NetBeans, open Web project and choose Java Server Faces framework.