Java Kecil 2x

If you are interested in taking some Java ME (MIDP) apps and games for a run in the familar confines of your desktop, you may be interested in this web-start enabled Java desktop app that provides lots of games and apps for you to test. A couple years ago, there were several of this “midlet players”, but none were as polished as this.

Ready? Click here to go to the mpowerplayer homepage, and good testing!

I found this while looking at Jim Liddle’s Amazon Explorer Thinlet, which he ported to MIDP from Personal profile/PersonalJava.

Oh, I am almost tingling with excitement!

Look out people, the next big battleground between Java and another contender (in this case, Microsoft and a bunch of manufacturers like Toshiba) is starting to shape up for later this spring, when the first next generation DVD players start coming out.

In one corner, you have Blu-Ray DVD, which uses Java ME (CDC) to create interactive menus and download apps, among other things. This group is headed by Sony, but represents (according to Blu-Ray) about 90% of the players in this new game.

In the other corner, you have Microsoft, Toshiba, and some other minor players, who are pushing a format called HD-DVD.

HD-DVD initially had very wide backing, but as it stands now, of the six largest Hollywood studios, only Universal Studios supports just HD DVD exclusively - the others either support both formats or Blu-Ray Disc.

So who’s gonna win? Well, we all know what happened when Java steamrolled the Microsoft alternatives in most small devices markets, but will Java triumph again in this new frontier?

There are already some opinions circulating in the hard-core DVD circles, and it looks like baring some unforeseen meltdown that Java will again thwart the ambitions of the Redmond giant.

DVD talk Forum

Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD: Which format will you buy?

It sucks to be Microsoft when Java ME comes rolling in, doesn’t it?

Addendum:

After researching the topic some more, I realized it’s more complicated situation than that.

The problem is that, although the Blu-Ray specs promise significantly better quality than HD-DVD, there might also be a significant price difference between the two, in that most Blu-Ray tech will be more expensive.

This is a problem, since we all know people are chepaskates when they cannot see any tangible difference between two products - and quality is a very intangible thing sometimes.

So I expect a fiercer battle here than I thought, part of a long battle between Java and Microsoft to control the living room. Sun’s Java won the initial rounds, handily in the cellphone market, and just recently it won when the 6 largest cable operators endorsed the Open Cable Application Platform, which is based on java, and will be up by 2009.

It’s weird, but two years or so ago, I remember that the number of posts on .NET in Javablogs was quite large. This was a couple years after Alan Williamson’s portentous “Java will be dead in 5 years” article in Java Developer’s Journal, and this big bad boogeyman obviously gave many nightmares to the inhabitants of Javaland.

Now, instead of panicked blogs about Redmond’s tamed Java alternative, we get panicked (and angry) blogs about the double R word.

It must be said that the Java ME world is only slightly better, mostly because the ubiquity and dominance of Java in this world, at least in the consumer markets, is almost without parallel. And yet there were noises made about .NET compact framework once, and before that it was BREW that caused ice to form in the hearts of Java Jihadists. Today, there is some slight fear of Flash Lite, although this is tempered by the realization that the situation of Java ME is nowhere near that of Java applets in the late 1990s.

It’s a common theme in human nature that unless there is some external factor that incites fear, progress stalls, and I guess this is why Java nuts aren’t really happy unless there’s some boogeyman to drive the continued development of the enterprise platform.

Plus, what would Javablogs be without the incessant blogs about the end of Java. As the old saying goes, light-hearted and happy musical films sell, but horror films sell even better.

This award honors a product which has proven itself to be the best in class and has significantly advanced the progress of Java ME in the small devices market.

This month’s winner: Opera Mini

Description:

Opera Mini™ is a fast and easy MIDP-based mobile browser that allows users to access the Web on mobile phones that would normally be incapable of running a Web browser. This includes the vast majority of today’s WAP-enabled phones.

Instead of requiring the phone to process Web pages, it uses a remote server to pre-process the page before sending it to the phone. This makes Opera Mini™ perfect for phones with very low resources, or low bandwidth connections.

Opera Mini™ offers the same speed and usability as the Opera mobile browser, and uses Opera’s Small Screen Rendering™ technology to provide access to the Web. It has all the features expected of a browser, and more, such as bookmarks, browsing history, and ability to split large pages into smaller sections for faster browsing.

Why It Won

This is the first Java app I’ve seen that has caused major ripples throughout the mobile space, including forums and websites dedicated to Palm and Windows devices. In many cases, it served to highlight deficiencies in the Java-capabilities of some of these gadgets, as users tried to add JVMs and run the Java app.

Installing Opera Mini on a Palm

Pocket PC Freeware

Its lean and mean performance will help combat the perception of Java MIDP apps as only good enough to be second-class citizens behind native apps, and demand for the Opera Mini will highlight the benefits of having Java ME to those who may not have heard of Java before.

As a bonus, some people even took potshots at Qualcomm’s hapless BREW over at Slashdot.org.

Links:

• Reviews:
  • All About Symbian
  • Opera Mini: Best Mobile Web Browser Bar None
• Forums:
  • Official Forum

If you would like to nominate a product for the Mitey Mover award, please email at kalim1998 (at) yahoo.com.

I’m almost always a skeptic when it comes to claims that Java is suited for almost everything, but we all know what happened when the mobile carriers and manufacturers got together and solidified support for Java on small devices in the early part of this century.

Fast forward to 2005, when a similar consortium of players are starting to solidify around a new standard for DVD players called Blu-Ray. Now, millions of Java technology-based set-top boxes have been shipped since 2004, but this new technology introduces a new Java ME CDC technology loosely called BD-J.

From: Java to appear in next-gen DVD players

Here’s a detailed read on Blu-Ray and Java’s place in it.

From: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

At first, there seemed to be an opposition forming in the form of something called HD DVD, which was backed by Microsoft (perennial loser to Java in the small devices market), but as of late last year, it looks like Blu-Ray will be the new standard.

From: Blu-ray Disc considered The New Higher Definition Format

MIcrosoft is sulky about all this and says that Windows Vista (the disappearing OS so far) will only support their format, although third parties can add in Blu-Ray support.

From: Vista to directly support HD DVD; Blu-ray to come from 3rd parties

Since Sony is one of the major backers of Blu-Ray, the company plans on implementing Java ME on the Playstation 3 coming later this year. Granted, Sony did this thing before where they reneged on Java in earlier version of PSP, but it seems they are serious about it this time, especially given Java ME’s astounding success in the cellphone arena.