Java gets a bad rap. It's considered old-school. People say that young developers prefer Ruby-on-Rails and other Web-based hot stuff. True - but these are not bad times for Java at all.

James Governor of RedMonk wrote a post that provides several good reasons why Java is really doing quite well.

Elance shows the current demand for people with Google App Engine skills is greater than those knowledgeable about Amazon Web Services. Audrey Watters of ReadWriteCloud saw the news and posted on the topic of IT Jobs as the question for our weekly poll. Sponsor

The reason why Google App Engine is doing so well? It's all about the enterprise. VMware's Spring Platform is based upon SpringSource, which has become the dominant platform for launching Java-based apps. It now integrates with Google App Engine, a primary reason for the growing success of the platform.

Governor makes some points that are worth noting:

NoSQL is one of the hottest trends in tech right now. Many of the technologies built on the platform are written in Java. It was born on the Web but will eventually move to the enterprise.

MapReduce? It's what Google and Yahoo! use to get fast responses over large data sets. It is built on Java. Hadoop is based on MapReduce. It has its own ecosystem developing around the technology.

And then there's this from Governor:

Of course we're also seeing innovation from the new hotness - thus Erlang underpins CouchDB and RIAK. But Java is certainly core to the innovation. Lets look at RabbitMQ for example - which though written in Erlang was acquired by SpringSource as a messaging engine to underpin a Java-based programming model.

Governor goes on to provide a number of other examples to make his point.

And we have to agree. Java is not dead. it still has plenty of room for innovation. Discuss

The Obama administration back in January promised $8 billion in funding for cities and states to build high-speed, intercity rail projects. This week, the Department of Transporation issued its specifications for the manufacture of new fast trains, namely double-decker coach, dining, baggage, and business class passenger rail cars that can travel between 79 MPH and up to 220 MPH. Bi-level rail cars not typical in the US today, would accommodate more passengers, and hopefully alleviate congested roads and some resulting air pollution. According to the American Association of State Highway & Transportation Officials (AASHTO) 95 percent of passenger travel in America is made by car, motorcycle and truck on our highways now. Expanding highway capacity and overhauling busted roads with more durable and sustainable materials can prevent some traffic jams. But even highway professionals advocate building efficient, intercity, high speed trains and upgrading our freight rail systems. Wireless companies like Groundlink and D-Link could win business rigging new high speed trains with internet service and related equipment. Cities that recently won government funding for their high speed passenger rail projects include: Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinatti, Ohio, and Battle Creek, Michigan among others along the Detroit to Chicago route. Feds promised the biggest piece of the budget in their national high speed rail transit program earlier this year to large-scale efforts in Florida and California that would connect Tampa and Orlando with 168 MPH trains, and Los Angeles and San Francisco with trains running up to 200 MPH. CrunchBase InformationGroundLinkInformation provided by CrunchBase CrunchBase InformationD-LinkInformation provided by CrunchBase

We haven't spotted this one at IFA yet, but Fujitsu has taken advantage of the show to announce its new LifeBook T580, which it's going so far as to call "slate-beating." That apparently comes from the fact that it's not only a convertible tablet PC, but one with four-finger multitouch. Unfortunately, that's done on a 10.1-inch resistive touchscreen (complete with a stylus that can be tucked away), but the rest of the specs aren't too shabby, and include up to a Core i5 processor, optional 3G and GPS, a promised eight hours of battery life, and plenty of business-minded security measures -- all in a three-pound package. No word on pricing just yet, but you can expect this one to roll out in late November. Head on past the break for the complete press release, along with a quick demo of its multitouch capabilities.Continue reading Fujitsu announces LifeBook T580 with four-finger multitouchFujitsu announces LifeBook T580 with four-finger multitouch originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 21:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink   |  Fujitsu, Face2Fujitsu  | Email this | Comments

One quote from an IBM executive stands out in the post that Chris Cameron wrote today about IBM's augmented reality app for the U.S. Open.

Rick Singer, IBM's Vice President of Sports Technology Partnerships said it all comes down tthe information generated with every tennis stroke, volley and serve:

"This is all about data. It's about how you take data, aggregate it and make it simpler to use," says Singer. "This is like having your best friend with you that knows everything about the Open right by your side because you can take all of that data and you can make better decisions." Sponsor

IBM is using the U.S. Open to demonstrate its commitment to cloud computing.

For example, according to eWeek, IBM implemented its analytics platform to use real-time and historical information to deploy services to "media organizations, tournament officials, the public, tennis players on different platforms such as broadcast, the Web, mobile devices and social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.

At the U.S. Open, IBM has deployed sensors to the radar guns, the umpire chairs and throughout the tennis grounds to collect data that can be analyzed and visualized.

It has partnered with the U.S. Tennis Association to provide its PointStream technology, which pull intelligence from the data around scores and match statistics. It is supposed to then present that information in real-time.

According to MediaPost, online viewers may also use IBM's Momentum Meter to see which player has a statistical edge. That provides a range of different possibilities for viewers. They can watch the matches on television and get stats from their smartphone, iPad or laptop. Images can be seen visually, which makes sense as following charts and graphs can be a bit cumbersome.

Analytics provide a different viewing experience for people watching the U.S. Open. The experience also provides a view of what we can expect as more "TV" plays venture online. For example, Google TV will be offering its own ways to analyze data to provide contextual information.

What we are seeing really is the start of a technology match that will last far longer than the last smash and volley at the U.S. Open. Discuss

Google settles Google Buzz privacy lawsuit for $8.5 million. 7 plaintiffs get $2,500 each. Lawyers $2.5 million -- Danny SullivanJoin the conversation about this story »

Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land: Google Announces Can't Be Missed Press Event On Search - What's Up?  —  Google's announced a special press event for next Wednesday on search that “you won't want to miss.” What big news could there be?  Let's speculate — but I wouldn't get too excited.  —  Here's what the invite says:

NASA has posted beautiful photos of Hurricane Earl over the North Atlantic. This pretty storm monster is about to ruin your Labor Day weekend.  See more amazing photos of the storm >

See more amazing photos of the storm > 30 Aug. 2010 --– Photographed by an Expedition 24 crew member on the International Space Station, this is an oblique view of the eye (center) of Hurricane Earl (at this time a category 4 but later downgraded to a category 3), centered just north of the Virgin Islands near 19.3 north latitude and 64.7 west longitude packing 115-kilometer winds. The photo was taken with a digital still camera using a 50mm lens.Join the conversation about this story »

While on-demand services like YouTube and Hulu get all the press, live streaming services have posted dramatic increases in viewer engagement over the last year. Time spent watching live online video increased nearly 650 percent in that time, to 1.4 billion minutes a month.

Balls of steel, baby, balls of steel! Duke Nukem Forever is the video games world's equivalent of the flying car: mothballed in the garage.…

Facebook has begun surfacing widely "liked" news stories from independent media organizations in its basic search bar today, it appears. First reported by watchdog blog AllFacebook, the change is something that seems likely to be understood as a challenge to Google. It's early days for the feature, but something to watch for sure.

Search for a phrase that's appearing in the news in the main Facebook search box and you'll see off-site links to news stories. "It's an interesting extension of what they did before in terms of off-site links," Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand told us by phone today. "It's not clear how exactly these stories are being chosen and it clearly needs more work. It could work like Google's Social Search, displaying items shared by your friends, but this remains something to watch and see rather than 'oh the revolution is here.'" Sponsor

Above: News search in action, asterisks mine.

Earlier this year, Facebook put up a blog post urging people to "Like" the pages of major news organizations, so that they would receive stories posted by those media outlets in their Facebook Newsfeeds . Yesterday the company began experimenting with a new method of subscribing to updates from high priority friends, family and other people.

Clearly when you put together 500 million people, their friend connections, their "like" affinities (on and off-site) - then there are a whole lot of permutations that can be analyzed and surfaced in various contexts. Facebook search and subscription are likely to be very interesting for some time.

This particular search feature may be of limited impact, though. Presumably the vast majority of searches that go on in that search box are for peoples' names - not topics in the news. Perhaps that will change, as Facebook tries to extend itself. Discuss