I was recently privileged to attend both the O’Reilly Android Open and X.commerce Innovate conferences back-to-back in San Francisco. Both were mind and network expanding events, and I’d highly recommend either to developers and business colleagues considering attending next year.

I hope to write more about my key takeaways from Android Open at some point in the future. For this article, let’s focus on Innovate.

So much transpired in a few short days that it would be impossible to capture everything in one short article. I’ll do my best to give you the overall flavor and major highlights, then I’ll dive a bit deeper to discuss some of the particular technical “breakout” sessions I attended.

Ready? Let’s go!

Keynotes and major announcements

The conference began each morning with a series of general session keynotes. You can access the conference schedule to see a full list of speakers, or better still, watch the keynotes (as well as breakout sessions) from the Innovate 2011 video site (click here to access).

Watch the Day 1 keynotes for yourself below (click here if the embed doesn’t work below):

Naveed Anwar, head of X.commerce community, discussed many of the key Day 1 developments in his blog post here. Some of the big ticket items for developers and merchants included:

• Launch of the “X.commerce Fabric“, a message-broker based system allowing developers to integrate and use various commerce capabilities. The Fabric ties together various components from eBay, PayPal, Magento, and other eBay companies with capabilities built by third parties, large and small. Much more on this to come.
• PayPal debuted “PayPal Access“, a new online “commerce identity” comparable to social identity, but for making commerce transactions faster and easier for the consumer. Read more about PayPal Access from the Janrain blog; I’ll also have much more to say about PayPal Access in coming months.
• Magento launched much tighter integration with eBay, allowing merchants to push products from Magento into eBay with just a few short clicks. You can read a third party take on the many and central Magento-related announcements via AuctionBytes (click here).
• Facebook announced Open Graph integration with Magento and GSI Commerce enabling, among other things, “Want” and “Own” buttons analogous to the already ubiquitous “Like” button. You can read much more about the eBay-Facebook partnership in this ZDNet article.

With the major announcements out of the way, the Day 1 afternoon and Day 2 morning keynotes could focus on inspirational higher ordered bits. These sessions were great motivation for attendees to take advantage of all of the technical tools at their disposal to make the world a better place. Whether by building corporate giving into their fundamental commercial business model, or by thinking about the effects of the current recession and the innovation that could get us out of it, or by imbuing everything we do with thoughtful design, these sessions were all meant to light the creative spark.

I particularly enjoyed seeing Steven Cooper (@developersteve), whom I featured in an interview article for the X.com site last year, receive a community award at the beginning of the day 2 morning keynotes. You can watch the awards presentation and all of the Day 2 keynotes here:

If the embed fails to load, you can alternatively click here for the Day 2 morning general session.

Other things I found striking during the second morning’s general session:

• Marshal Cohen spoke at length about the current recession and what might need doing, especially in the United States, to innovate our way out of it. One item in particular stuck with me: He pointed out that while the current recession is not the longest in US history (yet), it is the deepest by job losses. I have to agree with his conclusion that a fundamental shift is underway and many of the lost jobs aren’t coming back, so it’s more important than ever to focus on new commerce opportunities. Build your business to take advantage of inevitable innovations and the sky’s the limit.
• X.commerce developer evangelist Praveen Alavilli (@ppalavilli) showed some live X.commerce code in front of thousands. Always a gutsy move! Access his demo code yourself from GitHub here. By the way, Praveen has written a great blog post about getting started with the Fabric since Innovate completed; click here to check it out.
• Hip-hop artist Chamillionaire (@chamillionaire) stole the show discussing how he used community and tech skills to build his fan base from the streets of Houston to the Grammys and beyond. What an amazing innovator! I’d highly recommend watching at least his portion of the day 2 keynote; prepare to be impressed and inspired.

I could write several more articles about the various keynote speakers and their stories. Instead, I’ll encourage you again to watch the videos for yourself.

Partner pavilion and a free O’Reilly book for you

There was a wide range of X.commerce partners showing their wares in the Partner Pavilion during and in between sessions. Somtimes I wondered just how they were packing so many thousands of attendees in such a small space! (The secret, of course, was lots of free coffee, snacks, and soda.)

Here’s a shot I took the first day of the X.commerce booth to give you a feel for the foot traffic:

One other cool thing going on in the Partner Pavilion, in my not so humble opinion, was that O’Reilly Media was giving away printed copies of the new book “Building eCommerce Applications”. This book is a collection of some of the most interesting and varied articles written by contributors to the X.commerce DevZone.

Even if you weren’t able to attend the conference, you can still download a free e-book copy from O’Reilly (click here to get your copy).

And yes, yours truly does have four articles included in the book, so I am a bit biased. Still, you can’t beat free, right?

Session highlights

I attended a number of interesting sessions at the conference. Rather than try to list them all, I thought I’d focus on the key points from the most interesting and useful for me.

• Two related sessions, “Introducing the X.commerce platform” and “From Code to Capability“, showed developers how to get started with the dive deep into the new X.commerce Fabric. I’d highly recommend clicking on the session titles and watching the sessions to get up to speed asap. You should also download the X.commerce Developer Package and the X.commerce Innovate demo code so you can try it out for yourself. Fabric will be a very important piece of the commerce development puzzle in the months to come.
• We all know mobile commerce is a BIG opportunity, right? What you might or might not know is how to take advantage of the various social, local, and mobile development strategies to capitalize upon it. “Commerce goes SoLoMo: Social, Local, Mobile” discusses what’s possible, focusing on Milo and Where.com (both eBay companies) in particular. I’d also recommend watching the “Mobile face-off: HTML5 vs. native apps vs. mobile platforms” panel to get a grip on the realities of native, HTML, and hybrid mobile development. I enjoyed both sessions and took away the point that we can do almost anything with today’s mobile technologies (boy have we come a long way since WAP and J2ME!).

Things to watch in the coming year

In summary, Innovate was crammed full of technologies to watch and good information on getting started with them. I’d recommend trying out Fabric and Access as soon as possible and paying attention to both as they roll out in the months ahead. There are also some very nice Magento and Facebook commerce opportunities coming; pay attention, and profit!

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the conference, the news coming out of it, and the new commerce possibilities available as a result of those announcements. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think. And happy commerce hacking!

Click here to access the full article on X.com.

RIM BlackBerry has an opening for a Senior Java Software Developer – Mobile Apps in Sunrise (Miami), Florida.

Relocation is provided within the U.S.

POSITION SUMMARY

The successful candidate will be working with the BlackBerry Business Applications group, leading the mobilization of social networking applications and driving the creation of platform components for enterprise solutions and developers. You will be focusing on the design and coding of mobile client functionality, UI and interfaces to backend systems.

ESSENTIAL SKILLS AND QUALIFICATIONS
5+ years J2ME mobile software development experience

Interested parties should send a copy of their resume to: jchilds@rim.com.

Please update your bookmarks to point to:
http://billday.com/javame

Java ME Application and Tool Repositories

Java ME Emulators and SDKs

Specifications:

• Mobile Information Device Profile
  (MIDP 2.0 Spec, 2.0 Reference Impl, and FAQ; 1.0 Spec and OTA Recommended Practice) — application runtime environment for wireless devices; requires CLDC
• Connected, Limited Device Configuration (CLDC 1.1 Spec, 1.1 Reference Impl, FAQ; 1.0 Spec) — base Java support for mobile phone, pager, PDA class devices
• Mobile Media API (MMA 1.0 Spec, 1.0 Reference Impl) — API for access and control of audio and video; targeted at CLDC and MIDP devices, but does not exclude support by CDC implementations
• Wireless Messaging API (WMA 2.0 Spec, 1.1 Spec, 1.1 Reference Impl) — APIs provides standard access to SMS and CBS messaging; WMA 2.0 will extend WMA to support multimedia messaging via MMS
• Java Technology for the Wireless Industry (JTWI 1.0 Spec, FAQ) — clarifies how MIDP, CLDC, WMA, and MMA technologies interoperate in real world end-to-end solution deployments
• Java APIs for Bluetooth (Java APIs for Bluetooth 1.0 Spec) — enables devices to integrate into Bluetooth environments
• J2ME Web Services (J2ME Web Services Specification 1.0 Spec) — optional package providing standard access to Web Services from Java ME

• Not find the Java ME specification you were looking for? Try searching through: All Java ME related Java Specification Requests (JSRs)
• Still not finding it? Try expanding your search to: All Java Specification Requests (JSRs)
• Related specifications: XHTML and HTML | HTTP 1.1 | TLS (based upon SSL) | HTTP over TLS | Compact HTML | Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) | Bluetooth | IEEE 802.11 standards

Books:

I’ve listed all of the Java ME development related books of which I am aware below, plus a few related wireless titles thrown in at the bottom for good measure. If you are considering buying one or more of these books, be sure you read the reader reviews on each page.

Additional books may be available by clicking here to search for Java ME titles in Amazon.com. You can also visit the kvm-interest archives for authors’ descriptions of their books and reviews from other Java ME developers.

• Riggs, Taivalsaari, and VandenBrink: Programming Wireless Devices with the Java(tm) 2 Platform, Micro Edition (The Java Series)
• John W. Muchow: Core J2ME Technology and MIDP (Sun Microsystems Press)
• Cynthia Block and Annette Wagner: MIDP 2.0 Style Guide for the Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (The Java Series)
• Jonathan Knudsen: Wireless Java: Developing with J2ME, 2nd ed (APress)
• Kim Topley: J2ME in a Nutshell (O’Reilly)
• Michael Yuan: Enterprise J2ME: Developing Mobile Java Applications (Prentice Hall)
• Qusay Mahmoud: Learning Wireless Java (O’Reilly)
• David Fox and Roman Verhovsek: Micro Java(TM) Game Development (Addison-Wesley)
• James Keogh: J2ME: The Complete Reference (McGraw-Hill)
• Daryl Wilding-McBride: Java Development on PDAs: Building Applications for Pocket PC and Palm Devices (Addison-Wesley)
• Yu Feng and Jun Zhu: Wireless Java Programming with J2ME (Sams)
• Michael Morrison: Teach Yourself Wireless Java with J2ME in 21 Days (Sams)
• Eric Giguere: Java 2 Micro Edition: Professional Developers Guide (Wiley)
• Enrique Ortiz and Eric Giguere: Mobile Information Device Profile for Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME): Professional Developer’s Guide (Wiley)
• Bill Ray et al: Professional Java Mobile Programming (Wrox)
• Michael Kroll and Stefan Haustein: Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) Application Development (Sams)
• Imtiyaz Haque and Brian O’Connor: J2ME Enterprise Development (John Wiley & Sons)
• Dan Harkey et al: Wireless Java Programming for Enterprise Applications: Mobile Devices Go Corporate (John Wiley & Sons)
• James White and David Hemphill: Java 2 Micro Edition (Manning)
• Vartan Piroumian: Wireless J2ME Platform Programming (Prentice Hall)
• Mikko Kontio: Professional Mobile Java with J2ME (IT Press)
• Paul Tremblett: Instant Wireless Java with J2ME (McGraw Hill)
• Dreamtech Software Team: Wireless Programming with J2ME: Cracking the Code (Hungry Minds)
• Hinkmond Wong: Developing Jini(TM) Applications Using J2ME(TM) Technology (Addison-Wesley)
• Mark Beaulieu: Wireless Internet Applications and Architecture (Addison Wesley)
• Martyn Mallick: Mobile and Wireless Design Essentials (John Wiley & Sons)
• Matthew S. Gast: 802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide (O’Reilly)
• Bob O’Hara and Al Petrick: The IEEE 802.11 Handbook: A Designer’s Companion

Related Sites:

Java Platform, Micro Edition homepage
KVM-interest mailing list archives (all things Java ME discussed here)
Bill Day’s blog

Discussions: Java.net Mobile & Embedded Community |Nokia Developer Boards | Keitai-L list | Siemens list

FAQs: Sun Mobility FAQs, Glossary | Wireless Telecom Glossary

Portals: Sun Mobility site | Forum Nokia | WirelessDevNet

Devices: Nokia device specs | RIM BlackBerry devices

US Carrier Developer Sites: AT&T | Sprint

802.11 Networks and WUGs: Community WiFi Cafes | Wi-Fi Hotspot List | Wi-Fi Zone Finder | NodeDB.com | 802.11b Community Network List

Bill Day’s technical presentations (Java ME and other topics)
Spotless research VM
Zev Blut’s Basic guide to developing iAppli programs (Java for imode)
O’Reilly Network 802.11 articles
Google Mobile

Events: java.net Event Calendar | JavaOne

News: Engadget | Wireless Week

Here’s my first video ad. To start with it appears that GooTube merely links to YouTube’s latest videos from the text “Watch the latest videos on YouTube.com”. It’ll be interesting to see how fast and how well this improves to properly target the content of my site.

Other changes I’m making while I’m at it:

• Changed my site search to use Google AdSense for Search and moved the search block up closer to top of page
• Simplified BillDay.com and Flickr feeds to one each
• Removed WAP support, Bloglines and My Yahoo subscribe feeds/buttons from blog sidebar (nobody’s using them, so they’re gone)
• Trying out Google Analytics to see if it adds enough beyond my current package to continue using it

Let me know what you think.

I have added discussion forums to my site.

I opted to do this to enable a more free flowing discussion than my previous, moderated Y! Groups lists allowed. This change also enables new features such as private messages between community members without requiring them to necessarily make their email addresses publicly visible. Go to BillDay.com/discuss to join the conversation.

Current forums include:

• Java ME forum – Discuss the Java Platform, Micro Edition and related Java technology and wireless development topics (supercedes my former Y! J2ME Archive discussion list)
• Flash Lite forum – For Flash Lite and related SVG-T and wireless development discussions
• Server Tech – If the bits execute in a server somewhere besides the mobile device, discuss them here
• Mobile Jobs – Companies with wireless and mobile development related jobs post descriptions of open positions here (supercedes my former Y! Mobile Jobs discussion list)

I am also taking this opportunity to rename my archive to be the “Java ME Archive” to reflect the rebranding of “J2ME” as “Java ME”. As a part of this re-launch of sorts, I have made a number of updates and edits to the (now) Java ME Archive so that it contains the latest links to tools and information for mobile Java and related wireless development.

I may add additional forums over time as community interest reveals demand for them. Please let me know what you think about the new forums or if you’d like to see something added.

Someone’s finally written the first known J2ME malware.

Read up on the details (including how to avoid infection or remove Redbrowser.A from an already infected mobile) from Symantec and McAfee.

I guess it was inevitable, but given the huge number of deployed devices as potential targets it’s amazing that it’s taken close to seven years for something as weak as Redbrowser to finally appear.

Why not just link to my “J2ME Archive“, blogger_guy, instead of ripping most of the interesting bits while making sure not to include the copyright statement and other clearly identifying portions of my page? I smell a crook.

I’ve emailed India Times’ blog support group to ask that they remove the copyrighted bits as follows:

To whom it may concern:

I found this page in Google:

http://o3.indiatimes.com/j2me

It clearly copies my copyrighted “J2ME Archive” page: http://billday.com/j2me

No one ask or was given permission to copy my material and post it on your O3 blog site.

Please remove this page immediately and instead link to the original, copyrighted “J2ME Archive” at: http://billday.com/j2me

Thank you,
Bill Day
Founder, Day Web Development
http://billday.com

I don’t believe anyone at India Times overseeing their blogs knew about this infringement, but I do hope to see them rectify the situation immediately. The lesson here is: Cheat, and Google’s gonna find you!