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In a sign of maturity for the Java platform, Sun Microsystems execs said this week's JavaOne Developer Conference in San Francisco will go back to the basics by delivering less hype and more technology. Instead of simply watching chief executives market their products, attendees will learn how to move Java applications beyond the computer to cellular phones, PDAs, smart cards, and any other networked device, says Patricia Sueltz, executive VP and general manager of Sun's software systems group. "This year, we're going to focus back on you, the developer," she said in a keynote address Monday.

Winning developers to the platform for building and running Web applications is crucial for Sun and its partners, who face formidable competition from Microsoft's .Net technology. Both camps are focused on delivering tools that support XML and emerging Web-services standards, which proponents say will drive the next generation of Web applications.

In helping Java move beyond computers, the Java Community Process, the Sun-established industry-standards group, is developing application programming interfaces supporting XML and Web-services technology, says Richard Green, VP and general manager of Java and XML for Sun. One such API would enable Java applications running on mobile phones and PDAs to communicate with other applications on a network through an XML-based Simple Object Access Protocol, an emerging Web-services standard. In addition, with Sun's "Project Monty," virtual machines can run applications 10 times faster but use less battery power in handhelds, Green says. And for developers building server-side applications on the Java 2 enterprise platform, Green said an early release of the Java Web Services Developer Pack for Solaris, Windows 2000 and XP, and Red Hat Linux is available on Sun's Web site.

In an indirect reference to a federal antitrust lawsuit Sun filed against Microsoft earlier this month, Green encouraged developers to install the latest version of the desktop Java platform, Java 2 Standard Edition, on Microsoft's latest Windows operating system, XP. In the suit, Sun claims Microsoft has engaged in unfair business practices by leveraging its Windows desktop monopoly to undermine Sun's competing Java platform. Sun claims Microsoft is using Windows XP to impede Java's adoption in the market.

News source: InformationWeek - Sun Says It's Moving Java Beyond The Computer

Gradual takeover
''You'll see enormous advances in optical components and devices,'' he said. ''Miniaturization will lead to many-orders-of-magnitude increases in performance. You can do a lot more in a lot less real estate.''

In laboratories around the world, physicists and optical engineers are practicing ingenious tricks to control light. They have learned how to make photons follow straight paths, split, rejoin, turn sharp corners, change speed, even stop in their tracks.

Lene Hau, an optical physicist at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Mass., has slowed a beam of light to the sluggish pace of about one mile per hour, a tremendous drop from its normal speed of 186,000 miles per second. Peter Zoller, a physicist at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, has brought a bunch of photons to a complete stop, then set them free to zoom off again at their original pace.

''It's thrilling to think we can control light,'' Hau said, adding that many research groups ''all over the world are pouring into the field.''

According to Hau, scientists put the brakes on photons by slamming them into a cloud of sodium atoms that have been cooled to almost 460 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.

''When the light enters the cloud, it slows down and compresses like a concertina,'' she said. ''When it exits the cloud, it expands and goes on its way, exactly like it was before.''

Unimaginable benefits
The first commercial beneficiaries of the photonics research probably will be computing and telecommunications. They stand to benefit from the blinding speed and minute size of particles of light.

Computer scientists have dreamed for years of being able to compute with photons instead of electrons. Current technology is nearing its physical limit as computer-makers cram more and more transistors onto silicon chips.

To get around the limits on the chips' capacity, government, academic and private researchers are turning to photonics. Photonic crystals -- tiny cages or honeycombs constructed of silicon -- trap, guide and switch light much the way semiconductors manipulate electrons in today's computers.

''The optical world will slowly creep its way into the electronics world by replacing devices on a chip,'' said Axel Scherer, an electrical engineer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

In the communications field, most long-distance telephone and computer networks already transmit digital information -- zeroes and ones -- in the form of pulses of light racing along optical fibers.

Overcoming drawbacks
In contrast, researchers say future optical-communications systems will use fibers composed of tiny mirrors that direct photons down a desired path without using wires.

Yoel Fink, a physics professor at MIT, invented ''photonic fibers,'' which he said can deliver up to 1,000 times more photons than today's fiber-optic cables. Fink and colleagues started a company, Omniguide Communications, based in Pasadena, to commercialize their invention.

At least a dozen other firms are entering the field, despite the slump in high-technology companies that includes the Jan. 28 bankruptcy of Global Crossing, a big fiber-optics communications company.

Major corporations such as IBM, Lucent and Agilent Technologies are developing ''photonic switches,'' systems of mirrors that redirect photons like freight cars in a railroad yard.

Scherer said photonic crystals can be manufactured at a reasonable cost using the same basic technology as today's silicon-chip factories. He predicted that such devices ''will be ready for commercial applications very soon.''

''Right now, it's mostly baby steps in the lab,'' said Mikhail Lukin, a Harvard physicist. ''But there is hope for something practical someday.''