The Java Ecosystem

I promised myself to look at the .Net 3.5 Beta by now but I've been overwhelmed by the number of technologies found in the Java ecosystem that I haven't yet found the time. It doesn't help that I only work 2 to 3 hours a day either.

But seriously, I feel like a newborn experiencing all these interesting technologies:

1. Google Web Toolkit. Write a Java application and compile it down to JavaScript to get an Ajax site. Really interesting and really fund to code. I can definitely think of a large application or two that I wrote on the desktop that would have been on the web had this been around circa 2002.
2. Project Phobos. So, if you're planning on writing the web front end in java, why not write the server in JavaScript? OK, haven't played with this one yet but interesting nonetheless and I certainly will find something to do with this if it works well.

The number of tool kits that Sun has made available under its open source initiative is staggering. Need federated single sign on? No problem, just use OpenSSO. It also supports OpenDS as an LDAP back end. If you consider that OpenSSO is extensible and can be made to support InfoCard. Even more attractive it becomes when you consider you can use it from any language thanks to its support of web services via SOAP and Rest.