IBM releases XML toolkit for Java providing native XML features to the Java EE 1.4.

IBM XML Enhancements for Java, part of their Emerging Technologies Toolkit (ETTK), has released a tool for providing language extensions to J2EE 1.4 to support XML, XML Schema, and XPath in Java.

This is unique because it uses a Java language-based approach to developing XML applications. Through integration of Java and XML, the extensions simplify the development of XML-based applications and enable developers to reuse existing Java libraries when developing XML code.

Integration with XML at the language level is a feature supported by Groovy, and currently being debated by Java heavyweigts for inclusion in Dolphin. (JSE 7)

XML Enhancements for Java 1.1 released

“Addressing a crowd of developers in Sydney today, Google Maps creator Lars Rasmussen encouraged them to embrace bleeding edge technology in browser software. He cited the example of how Google Maps can command Internet Explorer to use VML (Vector Markup Language by Microsoft) to display a blue line between geographical points, but use a PNG graphic format and a linear description for the Firefox browser.”

From the article: “Firstly, the Web allows rapid deployment and there is no software for users to install. It’s also much easier to make sure code runs on multiple browsers compared with multiple operating systems like Mac OS X and Windows. The downside is that browsers don’t give programmers full access to a computer’s resources such as memory, process power and hard disk space. This is a bottleneck the engineer sees being removed in future, although he thinks the simplicity of the current Web browsing experience needs to be maintained.”

Take browsers to the limit: Google

Slashdot | Google Maps Creator Takes Browsers To The Limit

Fuzzball963 writes “Kevin Kelly has an interesting article over at Wired on the development and future of the web. In it, he argues that in ten years the desktop OS will become obsolete in favor of a Web based one, and that content on the web will be automatically customized according to the device being used to access it (PDA, smartphone,etc).”

From the article: “Today the nascent Machine routes packets around disturbances in its lines; by 2015 it will anticipate disturbances and avoid them. It will have a robust immune system, weeding spam from its trunk lines, eliminating viruses and denial-of-service attacks the moment they are launched, and dissuading malefactors from injuring it again. The patterns of the Machine’s internal workings will be so complex they won’t be repeatable; you won’t always get the same answer to a given question. It will take intuition to maximize what the global network has to offer. The most obvious development birthed by this platform will be the absorption of routine. The Machine will take on anything we do more than twice. It will be the Anticipation Machine.”

Wired | We Are The Web

Slashdot | The Future of the Net

We knew it would eventually happen, someone at Realdoll called the guys at robo-lab!! Heck! In a few years I’ll buy a couple myself!

“An android could get away with it for a short time, 5-10 seconds. However, if we carefully select the situation, we could extend that, to perhaps 10 minutes,” – Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro, Osaka University, Japan.

jolyon writes “The BBC is reporting that Japanese scientists have unveiled the most human-looking robot yet devised – a “female” android called Repliee Q1. ‘She’ has flexible silicone for skin rather than hard plastic, can flutter her eyelids, move her hands like a human and even appears to breathe. She can only sit though at present, so we’re a long way from Blade Runner yet.”

* Slashdot | Japanese Develop ‘Female’ Android

Talkr.com is a pretty neat webservice that converts blogs into mp3 audio blogs (aka Podcasts), the sound and voice quality is pretty good, at first I actually thought it was read by a human, but the strange pauses between words doesn’t sound too human afterall. It costs money to get your own blog converted on a daily basis, but as far as I read you can download three files pr. day for free (bandwidth costs money).

* Talkr – Letting blogs speak for themselves