McNealy to leave Sun?

According to speculation from industry analysts and discussed in this blog here, Scott McNealy, the CEO of Sun Microsystems is expected to resign. He was quoted as saying that he is planning on staying with the company “until the job is done”, which from interviews by analysts with McNealy includes the following goals “reestablishing product superiority, regaining control over costs and igniting demand in a broad and balanced customer base”. Analysts already believe that these goals have been met, which raises the question of when McNealy is planning on stepping down.

This speculation is somewhat plausable. The next part of the blog entry goes a whole step further and suggests that if and/or when this happens, would Google see this as an opportunity to buy out Sun? Wow. Now that would be interesting. Already being labelled as the ‘new Microsoft’, if Google bought out Sun they would instantly become a powerhouse on a different level. For one they gain control of Java, and a hugely loyal developer base, plus a wide customer base not only of users of Java-based systems, but users of existing Java-based products from many companies. Secondly, Google becomes a hardware/server provider. This could be an interesting move for Google, especially to inject Sun’s hardware into their existing Google Search Appliance business.

Would this be a good move for both companies? I think so. Google is desparately looking to expand and branch out to become more that just the ‘Google Search website’, and has some of the best minds in the industry working with them. To take on technology assets like Java would suddenly gain them far more interest from the industry. For Sun, I feel they could benefit from an injection of new enthusiasm that a smaller company like Google would bring. It would be an interesting move, but I think beneficial.

DevX.com: Overview of Java SE 6.0 Beta new features

Although SE 6.0 is not a major release with significant language syntax changes as SE 5.0 was, there are still some interesting enhancements that will be included in the 6.0 release. DevX.com has an article giving an overview of each of these enhancements.

Included changes:

  • Compiler API – to allow developers to be able to programatically compile source code. Interesting for code generation projects.
  • Memory leak and detection information, with improved stack trace for java.lan.OutOfMemory errors.
  • JDesktop Integration Components (JDIC) project. This API gives Java applications access to native operating system features on the desktop, such as the browser, email editor, file-type associations, the system tray, application launching, and printing.

Google to host online storage ‘GDrive’ service with unlimited storage?

In a recent presentation to industry analysts, one of the slides mentioned the possibility of an online storage service for users to backup their entire harddrives, with ‘infinite storage’.

The Powerpoint slides appeared on the Google site for a short time before it was noticed that the notes attached to the slides mentioned this yet unannounced service that wasn’t explicity mentioned in the slides themselves. The slides were later replaced with a PDF version of the presentation minus the presenter notes.

Thinking in Java 4th Edition now in bookstores

Thinking in Java is a classic Java book by Bruse Eckel. This is an awesome book, that goes far beyond the typical leanring Java books, because Bruce goes to some length to explain not just the how, but also the why.

If you want to get a more indepth understanding of the Java lanaguage and platform then this book is a definite ‘must read’ (however it may be too much information for someone just starting out with Java).

If you’ve come across this book before, then this 4th Edition of the book has been updated to cover Javav SE 5.0 features, and now weighs in at 1500 pages.

Previous editions of the book can be found for free electronic download on Bruce Eckle’s website, here.

Bruce was also recently interviewed on the Java Posse webcast, in which they talked about the book in some detail. The podcasts(2 parts) can be downloaded here.