It’s almost time to get in touch with one’s inner Java geek, and others, at JavaOne in San Francisco, May 6-9.

Call it a unit of knowledge, but beware of calling it a ‘knol’, as Google has applied to trademark the term.

Launching a new product? A new book? Or a new product? If it’s mass consumer-related, you might want to take a leaf out of FakeSteve (Jobs) book, Options.

Fake Steve Jobs (AKA Forbes senior editor Dan Lyons) has been penning the Fake Steve satirical blog of the Apple co-founder to the bemusement of folks in the Valley. With potrayals of Microsoft boss Bill Gates as “Beastmaster Bill” (both Bill and the real Steve are fans of the blog), it’s garnered nothing less than a rabid following.

Apple announced third-party apps for the iPhone. Sounds a LOT like Adobe’s new AIR. Delivers HTML and JavaScript apps down to the phone via Safari. What’s interesting is what Steve Jobs left out.

No Java. So, can’t run Kyte.tv’s application. Can’t run the Google Maps application I’m using on my Nokia. Can’t run something cool coming soon from eBay that I’m testing out. Can’t run Radar.net. Etc. Etc.

Java has long failed to woo Internet users on the client front-end. Flash was ruling it for years; but with the recent announcement of SilverLight from Microsoft, Sun could no longer stay behind. So, they are trying again with a consumer-flavored Java – JavaFX.

In November, Sun Microsystems moved to “open source” status for Java, after a decade of maintaining proprietary status for the portable programming language.

My thesis advisor keeps reminding me to frame the question correctly, otherwise the experimental results will be meaningless.

So, the news is official: (and yes, I agree with IBM’s question as to why Sun didn’t join one of the community projects focused on delivering open source implementations of Java SE, ME and EE instead of trying to build their own community.)

Matt Asay believes that Sun’s rumored move to put the Java SE reference implementation under the GPL shows that “Sun is one of the few BigCo’s” that really gets open source.

Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced the release of Java technology as free software under the GNU General Public License version two (GPLv2). The first portions of source code for Java Platform Standard Edition (Java SE) and Java Platform Micro Edition (Java ME) will be made available today.

IT Analyst James Governor from RedMonk has a posting about what IBM needs to do to get more involved in the web 2.0 world.

There’s a lot of confusion about what Sun actually intends to do when they use the term “open source java”.

Joshua Bloch has a good presentation outline called How to Design a Good API and Why it Matters.

New Atlanta, recently released Beta 1 of version 7 of thier BlueDragon CFML application server.

Sun Java Certification exams are the best way to demonstrate your skills in Java technologies. These certifications are industry recognized and worldwide programs that focus on critical job roles in software application development and enterprise architecture.

A new tool “that allows developers to create UltraLightClient user interfaces from XML files” has been released by Canoo.

Ethan Nicholas is working on something that might make “the idea of using . . . Java Web Start programs . . . more appealing.” Called Java Kernel, the idea was originally submitted under the name Java Browser Edition.

The release of Java 5 was widely hailed by Sun and through the tech world, but one programmer sees evidence of ‘feature creep’ posing problems for Java coders.

Some days I pinch myself because of the interesting people I get to hang out with and interview and talk business with. Here’s an example.

Sun Microsystems has held tightly to control of its Java source code, despite years of pleas for them to open it to the development community.

What in the world is going on in the marketplace? Technology is moving so fast that it is sometimes a little difficult to tell what is happening.