Catching Up With Neil Young and Sun At JavaOne

Quite a crowd turned up for Sun Microsystem's JavaOne Conference in San Francisco, and not just to see Neil Young. Sun's mantra at Tuesday morning's opening general session? It's all about consumer-driven technology and giving developers the open-source tools they need to give customers what they want, said Jonathan Schwartz, president and CEO of the Santa Clara, Calif.-based computing vendor.

JavaOne kicked off with dancing and music. Later, when the masks came off, "Father of Java" James Gosling led a discussion and demonstration of new sensor technology for consumer and industrial applications.

James Gosling fires Java schwag at the revved-up crowd during Tuesday's opening general session at the JavaOne Conference.

Google's Android mobile device platform, here blown up in its Android emulator interface, is where exciting new JavaFX applications are being built for the next generation of open smart phones, said Rich Green, EVP of software at Sun. Another Java-driven device that's capturing developers' imagination is Amazon's Kindle e-book, Green said.

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz, right, and EVP Rich Green discuss Java's future and announce the development of Sun's Insight project, which they promise will give developers unprecedented access to the real activity of users of their applications for the purposes of better tailoring products to customers' needs.

Jonathan Schwartz and Rich Green greet rock-and-roll star Neil Young for a demonstration of a Java-based, Blu-ray-delivered interactive media package that catalogs and illustrates 40-plus years of music and footage from Young's prolific career.

"Are we going to get a demo?" asks Sun CEO Jonathan Schwarz of Neil Young. The rocker, no fan of spin, replies: "We are, and it's fake, so it's going to work."

Neil Young describes how he has been attempting to build a comprehensive, interactive archive of his music for at least 10 years, but the upcoming Anthology project only really took off with the development of Blu-ray and the Java platform. While he had earlier hoped DVDs would be able to handle his vision of a graphically dynamic and user-driven presentation of his life work, the format simply couldn't handle what he demanded of it.

Young's Anthology project, produced by Shakey Pictures, traces the musician's career from its beginnings with the Squires in the mid-1960s through his work with Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills, NashYoung, Crazy Horse and his solo performances. The best part about the project?

"It's not static," said Young. "It's not finished because people keep having things to add, so we're never done. Maybe there's stuff we've missed, but we can add things because it's Java-enabled. The Internet will tell you that new content is available, then it just gets downloaded and added to the package."

A printout of Neil Young's song catalog, represented in its entirety and digitalized from analog masters where necessary, stretches across the entire stage at the Moscone Center hall hosting Sun for the JavaOne Conference. With the necessary advances in technology, Young's vision "crawled out of the blackness, out of the dirge and onto the Blu-ray disk," according to the singer-songwriter, who recommends playing such media on a gaming console like the PlayStation 3 instead of ponying up for a specialized Blu-ray player.