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Java – It’s not Dead, Folks – It’s Doing Just Fine

Java gets a bad rap. It's considered old-school. People say that young developers prefer Ruby-on-Rails and other Web-based hot stuff. True - but these are not bad times for Java at all.

James Governor of RedMonk wrote a post that provides several good reasons why Java is really doing quite well.

Elance shows the current demand for people with Google App Engine skills is greater than those knowledgeable about Amazon Web Services. Audrey Watters of ReadWriteCloud saw the news and posted on the topic of IT Jobs as the question for our weekly poll.

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The reason why Google App Engine is doing so well? It's all about the enterprise. VMware's Spring Platform is based upon SpringSource, which has become the dominant platform for launching Java-based apps. It now integrates with Google App Engine, a primary reason for the growing success of the platform.

Governor makes some points that are worth noting:

NoSQL is one of the hottest trends in tech right now. Many of the technologies built on the platform are written in Java. It was born on the Web but will eventually move to the enterprise.

MapReduce? It's what Google and Yahoo! use to get fast responses over large data sets. It is built on Java. Hadoop is based on MapReduce. It has its own ecosystem developing around the technology.

And then there's this from Governor:

Of course we're also seeing innovation from the new hotness - thus Erlang underpins CouchDB and RIAK. But Java is certainly core to the innovation. Lets look at RabbitMQ for example - which though written in Erlang was acquired by SpringSource as a messaging engine to underpin a Java-based programming model.

Governor goes on to provide a number of other examples to make his point.

And we have to agree. Java is not dead. it still has plenty of room for innovation.

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China’s Baidu Refocuses on Mobile and Apps

Baidu is the most-visited website in China and has captured 70% of search revenue in that country. Alexa's Top 500 Global Sites list puts it at number 6. But with virtually no penetration outside Asia, can it really be considered a global company at all, or just an awfully big one?

Until it reaches beyond its shores in an appreciable and sustained fashion, it probably won't be considered a global player of consequence. But its latest move may do just that. It is refocusing a great deal of its enormous resources into the mobile and app markets.

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At the annual Baidu developers conference yesterday, CFO Jennifer Li reiterated the company's dedication to the mobile space. The 10-year-old company started focusing on mobile last year with the development of a texting language and mobile mapping. At that point it also established a dedicated mobile department.

As for apps, last night its Box Computing Open Platform went live. The BCOP allows users to run apps, including games, videos and e-books, through the Baidu website using any platform.

A lot of our coverage of China focuses on Google's issues there. Among those issues are the lack of stability: what can a company or developer expect, day to day? With China's shifting censorship regime, it is hard to anticipate what might be disallowed. Mobile apps are dependent on the robustness of their developer community.

Will non-Chinese developers be willing to put time and money into developing on Baidu's platform? Can Chinese developers develop on Baidu for Western users compellingly enough to attract them? Or will the future of China's global influence be on the Internet of Things, leaving Baidu a strictly Chinese concern?

This isn't a rhetorical question. We sent it to a couple of our friends with first-hand knowledge of the Chinese web industry. But if you've got knowledge of your own, share it why not?

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IBM at the US Open – Analyzing Every Volley, Serve and Overhead Smash

One quote from an IBM executive stands out in the post that Chris Cameron wrote today about IBM's augmented reality app for the U.S. Open.

Rick Singer, IBM's Vice President of Sports Technology Partnerships said it all comes down tthe information generated with every tennis stroke, volley and serve:

"This is all about data. It's about how you take data, aggregate it and make it simpler to use," says Singer. "This is like having your best friend with you that knows everything about the Open right by your side because you can take all of that data and you can make better decisions."

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IBM is using the U.S. Open to demonstrate its commitment to cloud computing.

For example, according to eWeek, IBM implemented its analytics platform to use real-time and historical information to deploy services to "media organizations, tournament officials, the public, tennis players on different platforms such as broadcast, the Web, mobile devices and social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.

At the U.S. Open, IBM has deployed sensors to the radar guns, the umpire chairs and throughout the tennis grounds to collect data that can be analyzed and visualized.

It has partnered with the U.S. Tennis Association to provide its PointStream technology, which pull intelligence from the data around scores and match statistics. It is supposed to then present that information in real-time.

According to MediaPost, online viewers may also use IBM's Momentum Meter to see which player has a statistical edge. That provides a range of different possibilities for viewers. They can watch the matches on television and get stats from their smartphone, iPad or laptop. Images can be seen visually, which makes sense as following charts and graphs can be a bit cumbersome.

Analytics provide a different viewing experience for people watching the U.S. Open. The experience also provides a view of what we can expect as more "TV" plays venture online. For example, Google TV will be offering its own ways to analyze data to provide contextual information.

What we are seeing really is the start of a technology match that will last far longer than the last smash and volley at the U.S. Open.

Oregon Tribes Make Huge Rural Broadband Investment

The Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in Central Oregon have made a commitment to broadband for its largely rural population. Taking advantage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act's broadband funding, the Tribes will spend $5.4 million in extending broadband infrastructure throughout the reservation and making it affordable for tribal users.

Warm Springs has always been a forward-thinking community. A decade ago it started a business incubator and venture capital firm, welcoming and even buying tech companies, including GIS companies. To further its drive for independence, it needs its people, and client companies, to be able to connect with each other and the world at large.

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Led by the newly-formed Warm Springs Telecommunications Company, the project, a half-and-half grant and loan package, will blanket the 1,000-square mile reservation with a network that combines fiber and wireless; 1,800 people, 18 businesses and 22 institutions users, including tribal government and schools, health care facilities, police and fire will benefit.

For a long time the Warm Springs tribal corporation was Central Oregon's number one business in terms of revenue; it remains an important economic engine of the area, though its distance from population areas still make unemployment a chronic problem.

As Robert White noted in his book "Tribal Assets," Indian tribal polities that create wealth also push out into the surrounding areas, adding to the economic health of their area. Those who don't produce often act as a vacuum, absorbing state and local money. If Warm Springs' historical business acumen is any indication, the benefits of the broadband project will not stop at borders of the rez.

Tumblr’s Improved Attribution is Good News for Publishers

Tumblr is quickly becoming one of the Web's most popular and unique platforms on which to share and discover interesting content of all media. According to Tumblr, over 5.3 million posts are made each day by the service's over 7.5 million users. Posts are passed on over and over through Tumblr's "reblog" feature, but at such a high volume it's easy to loose track of where content originated. Tumblr hopes to solve this dilemma with some new attribution functionality launched earlier today.

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Whenever someone reblogs a post on Tumblr, text is generated automatically that produces a "via" link to the user it came from. As users reblog other reblogged posts, an ugly daisy-chain of these links clogs up the caption area, causing most users to simply delete it, breaking the chain of attribution.

Now, Tumblr has made is easy for users to add attribution metadata to posts just as they would tags and other information. This is great for users who want to credit where they found an interesting photo, quote or article, but this feature is a huge benefit to publishers.

As we mentioned earlier this summer, many popular publishers - including Newsweek, Huffington Post and The New Yorker - have flocked to Tumblr to share content in a new way. With this new attribution feature, they can rest assured that their content will be properly attributed as it is shared throughout the community.

This kind of publisher-friendly feature is likely a direct result of Tumblr's latest talent grab, Mark Coatney, formerly an editor at Newsweek. Coatney's new position is to serve as a liaison between Tumblr and media publications who want to leverage the platform, so it's likely Tumblr will continue to add features that will make publishers happy.

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