Starting with Java SE 7 Update 21 in April 2013, all Java Applets and Web Start Applications should be signed with a trusted certificate.

The April 16th, 2013 Critical Patch Update for Java SE (7u21) will change the launch behavior related to running Java Applets and Web Start Applications. Users will be presented with a dialog(s) that will provide additional information to the user who can choose to continue or terminate execution. For the best possible user experience, your Applets and Web Start Applications should be signed. 

What does this mean? Java SE 7u21 will introduce changes to Java browser plug-in behavior, encouraging application authors and vendors to sign code with a certificate from a trusted Certificate Authority. You, as a developer, are strongly encouraged to sign code now in preparation for this release and future releases.

For more information, read Java Applet & Web Start - Code Signing on OTN.

A new article published on the front page of otn/java, by Yogesh Tewari and Rajesh Kawad, of Infosys Limited Labs in Bangalore, India, titled “Real-Time Topic Modeling of Microblogs,” explores “the challenge of real-time extraction of topics from a continuous stream of incoming microblogs or tweets that are particular to an application” that they created. From a simple tweet text, the application is designed to accurately suggest relevant topics discussed in the tweet, and provide real-time timelines of topics generated from the tweet streams.

They explain that this is no simple tasks since a tweet, “considered as a text corpus, contains only 140 characters and second, given their brevity, tweets may not provide useful information and may contain different forms of text such as ‘smileys’ and short-form URLs. Finally, tweets are generated in real time.”

Yogesh and Rajesh apply LDA (latent Dirichlet allocation) to topic model tweets and make use of the Machine Learning for Language Toolkit (MALLET) API as the implementation for LDA – all performed in a Java environment. The LDA implementation is in turn encapsulated within the MALLET API, which here functions as a command line–based Java tool.

As they state: “Our targets are the actual Java classes that perform the LDA logic whose methods we invoke with required input in real-time. Storm is our choice of a free and open source distributed real time computation engine implemented in Java and running in a distributed mode. Storm is highly scalable and easily capable of handling incoming tweet streams. We use Twitter4J to stream tweets, which require valid Twitter authentication. So our task is to design a topology that will consume tweet streams and output a timeline of topics.”
Check out the article here.

The London Java community really put on a smashing first Java conference that was coloured with local flavour. The conference began on a keynote of patriotic fun as the national anthem was played as a picture of the Queen was displayed with the quote: "One likes to code". The participants stood politely, but did not sing.

The title of the keynote was "The Programmer" and was all about the act of programming, insights into who programmers are and tips to get better at it. Kevlin Henney received applause and cheers when he stated: "We didn't get into programming because we wanted to deliver business value. That's what we say during interviews." His knowledgeable presentation backed up with research was spot on and it's worth any developer's time to watch the replay on Parleys.

Oh, and do "mind the gap" between the train and platform as we are admonished nonstop by the station minders. As well, Mind the Geek, the clever tagline of the conference. But, if I don't mind the geek, what do I risk? Broken code, twisted error messages, suffering a memory leak or worse, I'm sure. Let us all mind our inner geeks, then?

With Devoxx UK, the number of Devoxxians will reach 5,500 across Europe this year. The hands-on labs, talks, quickies, birds-of-a-feather and bash run from 9:30am to 10:00pm in the spacious business design center with its mezzanine. 75 speakers talked in 50 sessions in 7 tracks about cloud, Java SE, methodologies, Java EE, web & big data, new languages on the JVM, and future Devoxx.

As if you didn't know, the French have already got a Holy Grail, and so refused to assist King Arthur and his Kiniggits in their quest. That was then, now the Brits borrowed the Grail from the French for the two-day conference and will return it for the beginning of Devoxx France starting tomorrow. 

Selected for their technical knowledge, leadership, inspiration, and tireless work for the Java community; three new Java Champions have been selected. They are Venkat Subramaniam, Toni Epple and Dan Allen. Congratulations, gentleman!

Venkat Subramaniam (USA)
Dr. Venkat Subramaniam is an award-winning author, founder of Agile Developer, Inc., and an adjunct faculty at the University of Houston. He has trained and mentored thousands of software developers in the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia, and is a regularly invited speaker at several international conferences. He is the (co)author of multiple books, including the 2007 Jolt Productivity award winning book Practices of an Agile Developer. His most recent book is Functional Programming in Java: Harnessing the Power of Java 8 Lambda Expressions. Follow Venkat on Twitter @venkat_s.

Anton (Toni) Epple (Germany)
Anton is working as a trainer and consultant for JavaFX, Swing and the NetBeans Swing Application Platform at Eppleton. In his free time he organizes the JayDay conference, contributes to Open Source projects, and is a community lead for the JavaTools community at Java.net. He's also a member of the NetBeans Dream Team and the NetBeans Governance Board. Follow Toni on Twitter @monacotoni.

Dan Allen (USA)
Dan Allen is an open source and standards advocate, community catalyst, author, speaker and innovator. He works at Red Hat as a Principal Software Engineer. In that role, he serves as the Arquillian community manager, contributes to various open source projects (including Arquillian, Asciidoctor, Awestruct and JBoss Forge), participates in the JCP and is on a mission to simplify software testing and documentation. He draws on his experience with the Arquillian project to help a variety of open source projects become wildly successful. He's also the author of Seam in Action (Manning, 2008), has written technical articles for various publications and is an internationally recognized speaker. After a long conference day, you'll likely find Dan chatting about tech and community with fellow community members over a Trappist beer. Follow Dan on Twitter @mojavelinux.

The Java Champions are an exclusive group of passionate Java technology and community leaders who are community-nominated and selected under a project sponsored by Oracle. Java Champions get the opportunity to provide feedback, ideas, and direction that will help Oracle grow the Java Platform. Nominees are named and selected through a peer review process. (Current Oracle employees are not eligible.) Learn more at the Java Champions page on Java.net.

The two spring Java developer conferences are taking place in two European capitals, London and Paris this week. Devoxx UK is on Tuesday and Wednesday, March 26 and 27 in London and Devoxx France is in on Thursday and Friday, March 28 and 29 in Paris. Devoxx France is sold out, but you can still join us in London. Register right away!

Oracle experts are giving a number of sessions about the future of Java technologies:

• Arun Gupta and David Delabassee, Getting started with WebSocket and server sent events using Java
• Attila Szegedi, project Nashorn
• Milton Smith, securing the future with Java
• Simon Ritter, 55 new features in Java SE 8
• Angela Caicedo, beyond Beauty: JavaFX, parallax, touch, gyroscopes and much more
• Simon Ritter and Steven Chin, the Mocha Rapberry Pi Lab
• Angela Caicedo, opening the hidden door: JavaFX deployment everywhere
• Patrick Curran and Heather Vancura, JCP & Adopt-a-JSR workshop
• Patrick Curran and Heather Vancura, How to participate in the future of Java
• Arun Gupta, teaching Java to a 10 year old

Come by the Oracle booth to talk to Oracle experts and staff members, hang out and win Raspberry Pis. Experts will demo Java SE, JavaFX, Java EE, Java ME and Embedded. Open seating area is available for anyone to hang out, meeting fellow developers and network. We will raffle Raspberry Pis (RPis) at the end of every day. At Devoxx UK, winners of 4 RPis will be announced at 7pm on Tuesday and at 3:45pm on Wednesday. At Devoxx France, winners of 3 RPis will be announced every day at 4:45pm.

The March/April issue of Java Magazine is all about community. A thriving community is vital to Java technology and the Java language. We give you a hands-on guide to Java citizenship--from taking the first steps to participation to taking on leadership positions and launching events. Learn how to host a hackathon, become a Java Champion, revive your JUG, and much more!

For this issue, we took our tagline, "by and for the Java community," to heart. It features the first-ever guest editor: Agnes Crepet, Lyon JUG leader and Duchess leader. Agnes was a great resource and helped us put together this issue of Java Magazine. She suggested story ideas, wrote about reinvigorating your JUG, and gave guidance throughout the process. The way she enthusiastically agreed to be guest editor is just another great example of the Java community in action. Many other community members came together to make this issue a success, and we are grateful.

Also in the issue:

• Java In Robotics — Meet Java pioneer Paul Perrone and some of his robots.
• Using Java 8 Lambda Expressions — We continue our series on exploring lambda expressions.
• Responsive Interportlet Communication with Ajax — Build portlets that communicate with each other and update dynically on the client.
• JavaFX in Spring — Stephen Chin uses Spring to build out data screens in a JavaFX application.

Java Magazine is a FREE, bi-monthly, online publication. It includes technical articles on the Java language and platform; Java innovations and innovators; JUG and JCP news; Java events; links to online Java communities; and videos and multimedia demos. Subscriptions are free, registration required.

Do you have feedback about Java Magazine? Send a tweet to @oraclejavamag.

From guest author, Jim Bethancourt, Houston JUG leader:

Howdy Java Developers!

If you've considered pursuing the Enterprise Architect certification in the past, but hadn't quite gotten around to it, this is a great opportunity to attempt to get certified in a highly cost-effective manner. The cost to take the beta version of the exam is only $50, and would usually cost at least $300 plus the cost of taking a certified course if you haven't previously passed the SCEA certification. The certification process is fairly rigorous, as you'll need to take a lengthy multiple-choice test, submit an assignment, and then write an essay explaining the decisions you made in your assignment.

If you are already SCEA certified, you can upgrade by taking the multiple choice test now or when the exam is live, but you are exempted from submitting the assignment and essay.

If you are a consultant, this certification comes with the added benefit of gaining access to the Oracle Partner Network and the customer implementation opportunities that Oracle shares with this group of partners. This is the only Java certification Oracle offers the opportunity to gain access to the Oracle Partner Network.

If you decide to pursue this certification, it will require a fairly significant investment of your time but could certainly open up new career opportunities for you. A few resources that you will likely find useful are:

If you are already developing Java EE 6 based applications, you will likely have an easier time studying, but don't let it stop you if you're not.

James Allen of Oracle's Global Market Development Group shows some of the examples of how Java can work from devices to the data center. With the explosion of the Machine-to-Machine (M2M) space, thousands of smart devices will be connected to each other and to a data collector. See how Java is scalable, can run on devices, the middle tier, and the backend. From the floor of Embedded World 2013.

Learn more about Java Embedded:

• OTN's Java Embedded Site
• Java Magazine: Embedded Everywhere (Free, registration required)
• Videos about Java Embedded at the YouTube Java Channel

A new article by Björn Müller, now up on otn/java, titled “Why, Where, and How JavaFX Makes Sense” incisively explores the intricacies of when, where, and how JavaFX is a good technology fit.

Müller writes:
 “Our experience proves that implementing an employee desktop front end with native technology is a valid approach and that JavaFX is a good fit.

* JavaFX is available on the leading desktop operating systems (Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X)
* Although it has gone through some painful changes, its evolution proves its vendor’s level of commitment.
* As the successor to Swing, it is being used by an increasing number of Java developers. Regardless of its future, it will benefit from a strong developer community.
* Compared to Swing, it provides a clear and clean architecture and features many enhancements: styling, event management, transitions, scene graph—to name a few.
* It provides the possibility of developing up-to-date user interfaces with animations, multitouch, and the like.
* It is based on a clear and clean language: Java.
* It provides all the professional Java tooling required to debug, analyze, profile, and log a client application.
* It enables a simple app-like installation on the client side, without any prerequisites.”

Müller provides a nuanced discussion of the kinds of architecture in which JavaFX should be embedded, its uses with JavaServer Faces, and reports on his own experiences using JavaFX.

Have a look at the article here.

Oracle has announced Early Access releases for Java ME Embedded 3.3 and the Java ME Software Development Kit (SDK) 3.3. This release provides an early access version of the reference binary for the Raspberry Pi, and is available on the Oracle Technology Network. Developers can start testing out the new features and functionality in the first complete Java runtime client optimized for ARM architecture connected microcontrollers and other resource-constrained devices--for just $35! The early access release of the Java ME SDK 3.3 adds support for embedded development on all the same supported platforms as Java ME Embedded 3.3, as well as full featured plug-ins for Netbeans and Eclipse. These releases provide everything a developer needs to get up and running quickly and easily in the small embedded world.

Java ME Embedded 3.3 is available as an early access release for Raspberry Pi (Model B) development board (for ARM11, Linux). This early access version of the product is available as a reference binary that is ready to install and run on the target development board. There is a rich set of peripheral IO APIs that make it possible to access a variety of different devices. Please send us your your feedback from testing this early access release. Tell us/show us what you are doing with small embedded devices and Java! (Ed Note: You can submit a video URL for the Java YouTube channel to otnfeedback_usAToracleDOTcom.) Additional functionality includes:

• the ability to monitor application memory status and network traffic at runtime.
• logging enhancements so you can better filter and customize edge data collected by your target device.
• build configurability to simplify right-sizing of stack at build time for small devices.

Java ME Software Development Kit (SDK) 3.3 provides a complete development and debugging environment for Java ME applications, now including support for embedded development on several platforms, including Windows 7. This release provides a device abstraction layer for your development environment via the SDK, on-device development with the Raspberry Pi, and new device emulators.

To get started, you can watch this video by Java Evangelist Simon Ritter "Getting Started with Oracle Java ME Embedded and Raspberry Pi"

Download Java ME Embedded 3.3
Download Java ME Software Development Kit (SDK) 3.3