The whole tone of this smells very bad.

More about Sun selling JavaFX to broadcasters than to end-users.

Still a couple of things sound good.

JavaFX script? WTF?

Unlike many other Java scripting languages, JavaFX Script is statically typed and will have most of the same code structuring, reuse, and encapsulation features that make it possible to create and maintain very large programs in Java

A scripting language designed for client-side RIAs which has the static typing that you need for "large programs". If ever there was self-serving, self-deluding talk it's Third, enterprises want to reuse their existing Java skills and assets in moving to RIA.. Are enterprises going to write RIA client widgets?

Widgets will get written by small, clever independents. Or more likely, graphic designers who started with Photoshop and Dreamweaver and painfully taught themselves Flex the way they taught themselves PHP. They won't get written by the mass-armies of mediocre java-school programmers who live inside the enterprise.


Meanwhile Project Caroline is allegedly their answer to Google Application Engine.

Microsoft buying Logitech sounds pretty unlikely on the face of it.

M$ are not a hardware company (if they can help it). And it's not clear what Logitech might offer (although speculating wildly, something tabletty?) Nevertheless these kinds of peripheral companies are going to be worth watching. They're going to get more interesting as the PC blows up into the device swarm. Some of them probably have some innovative devices which will become platforms in their own right.

Semi-related, I notice Gosling is pushing the Blu-ray connection with JavaFX.

"I think that a lot of the software development community--which I find really, really frustrating--is fixated on Web apps. They write their stuff on the server, it generates HTML, and there is this really big piece of the community that thinks that that is the universe," Gosling said.

"There's a lot more to it," he said. "Blu-ray is a pretty interesting corner of it."

Windows 7 to be integrated with Microsoft Live!.

What does it mean though?

MS has two problems :

- the desktop OS is almost a commodity. There are few applications that need Windows's specific services (as opposed to equivalents on Mac, Sun, Linux, or Android) It's hard to imagine Windows 7 doing something that other OSs aren't thinking about or couldn't quickly copy. (LINQ for serious applications? Drivers for multitouch Surfaces? Everyone will have something like that. )

- the PC is about to explode into the device swarm.

How does closer integration between Windows and Live! help in that context. It's not a winning move for MS to make their Live! services dependent on Windows 7. Will they exclude XP and Vista users from Live! in 2010? Unlikely.

After that, they can only compete on "seemless experience". But every time Microsoft compete against Apple on anything resembling an "experience", they hardly have the upper hand.

Now, the natural tethered client of an online service is a light-weight virtual machine like Flash, Silverlight or JavaFx. Not a whole operating system - users will want their virtual machines to play well together in a common sandbox, supporting
copying, pasting, dragging and dropping etc.)

There is scope for some individuation and platform warring among standards for these virtual machines. MS may be able to make Silverlight-only services, but they'll certainly have to make Silverlight run on Mac (and at least condone clones running on Linux)

This kind of virtual machine is also a natural for the device swarm : eg. Flash on Chumby, Java VM on mobiles ... Silverlight on XBox?

So while the desktop OS becomes a commodity, this space is going to get hot as the VMs compete for developers' attention. Particularly smaller devices are only likely to come with one of these virtual machines pre-installed. They'll compete on video-handling capability, graphics library, back-end data synchronization, bredth of applicability etc.

In a sense, the Java vision is finally coming into its own ... although whether Java turns out to be the victor is another matter.

Sun playing catch up with Adobe?

They gotta be scared now that AIR is getting lots of love ... ;-)