So, the announcement has been made and it is kinda vague at the moment.

Today, Sun creates yet another important relationship to add to our growing momentum. In an all-star alliance announced today, Sun and Google have begun a strategic relationship to promote and distribute their trail-blazing technologies. As part of the agreement, Sun will include the Google Toolbar as an option in downloads of the Java Runtime Environment from Java.com, Sun’s showcase and portal for Java technology enthusiasts and developers. The new functionality will be available soon.

In keeping with this precedent-setting relationship, executives from Sun and Google broadcast the agreement from the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, the world’s largest museum for preserving and presenting the history and influence of the computing revolution.

Watch the press conference Webcast.

“As a leader in free and open source software, Sun has long recognized that network innovation is vital to the evolution of the global economy,” said Scott McNealy, chief executive officer, Sun Microsystems. “Working with Google will make our technologies available more broadly, increase options for users, lower barriers, and expand participation worldwide.”

Java Momentum Good for Google

Java is one of the most recognized and respected technology brands in the world. Celebrating its 10th birthday this year, Java technology is everywhere and supports a $100 billion market.

Due to the popularity of Java on the desktop, downloads of Java have more than doubled year over year, reaching 20 million per month–and now users can also get the Google Toolbar. With the Java download and the Google Toolbar, users worldwide can benefit from the technology that is powering a new wave of Internet growth–and participate in its opportunities.

Trailblazing Technologies

Sun and Google are leaders in the new economy and at the forefront of the Participation Age. Users and developers alike are drawn to Sun and Google because of their embrace of sharing and innovation.

“Each company is blazing new trails with their technology and commitment to participation and open standards,” says Mark Herring, Sun director of Java Brand and Community Marketing. “The collaboration between these two powerhouses is a milestone for the industry. By working together, Sun and Google are ushering in a new era of dynamic, interactive technology solutions.”

Only the Beginning

The distribution of Java and the Google Toolbar underscores Google’s advocacy of Java technology. Google is a member of the Java Community Process (JCP) executive council and actively participates in shaping the next generation of the Java platform as part of expert groups for Java Specification Requests.

The agreement between Sun and Google also kicks off further collaboration between the companies on projects like OpenOffice.org, the open source productivity suite that is the world’s leading suite on the Solaris Operating System (Solaris OS) and Linux–and the leading alternative suite on Microsoft Windows.

“Google has long been part of the Java technology ecosystem, and today’s announcement highlights this relationship,” says Herring. “Sun is pleased to be working even more closely with a company that also values innovation and breaking down barriers. The agreement is the next big step in a great partnership.”

The bit I have underlined is the interesting bit for me. I wonder when this might become a reality? The speed at which Google has been knocking out products recently, it would not surprise me if this happened pretty soon.

Now this is a strange one: looks like someone has started up a blog pretending to be me! And sadly, it isn’t very flattering.

http://davebriggs.blogspot.com/

Now who would do such a thing? I guess the best thing I can do is ignore it – it is clearly someone with a lot of issues. They seem to think I am ‘John Self’ – who is a member of Palimpsest. Needless to say, that isn’t me at all! I could only wish to read as many books as John does!

Anyway, whoever you are, rather than continue to blunder around with your misunderstandings, why not get in touch with me here? My comments are always open and my email address is clearly published. I would like to think that if someone had an issue with me, they would come out and discuss it with me sensibly. It’s a shame.

Of course, it wouldn’t be such an issue if it was actually funny.

From recent trips to Llangollen, to see and ride on the steam train:

And to see the sea at Aberystwyth:

If you look at the titles I give photos on Flickr, you might notice that just recently I have been using utterly irrelevant book titles!

Am being hammered on comment spam at the moment. There seem to be 10 or more every hour.

Fortunatley WordPress is pretty good at holding them up so they don’t get posted on the site. Some of them are pretty amusing, or just totally weird. How about this:

free nextel ringtones We joseph promise that the a-slaver machine will stringy into neutralising budget-husband

With the Google Toolbar for Firefox installed, I never use the little search box built into the browser on the right of the address bar.

But since I had a play around, I found that by visiting here, I could search Wikipedia straight from Firefox. I didn’t realise how useful this was until this morning when I have used it about a dozen times.

Looks like some sort of announcement will be imminent.

An online office suite is a very smart move by Google – whilst it couldn’t be as fully featured as the current version of OpenOffice.org, let alone MS Office, for the majority of users what would be on offer would be more than enough.

• Here’s where the webcast of the announcement will take place.
• Here’s a link to the relevant Tachnorati search

Reporters Without Borders have a handbook downloadable or viewable on their website on blogging aimed at political dissidents and the like, offering advice on staying anonymous along with the usual stuff:

Blogs get people excited. Or else they disturb and worry them. Some people distrust them. Others see them as the vanguard of a new information revolution. Because they allow and encourage ordinary people to speak up, they’re tremendous tools of freedom of expression.

Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure. Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest.

Reporters Without Borders has produced this handbook to help them, with handy tips and technical advice on how to to remain anonymous and to get round censorship, by choosing the most suitable method for each situation. It also explains how to set up and make the most of a blog, to publicise it (getting it picked up efficiently by search-engines) and to establish its credibility through observing basic ethical and journalistic principles.

The three of us went for a trip to Ironbridge, near Telford, with my parents a couple of weekends ago, and a fun time was had by all.

More photos on my flickr page.

My quietness of late is largely down to the massive amount of work I have been putting into Palimpsest, head over there and take a look for yourself.

Basically, the old phpBB forum software just wasn’t up to the job. I think that when they get round to releasing version 3 this might chnage, but it was taking too long. Every other day the site seemed to go down with sessions error problems, and it seemed like the phpBB feature set was becoming more and more antiquated. So, I took the plunge and invested in vBulletin.

I had seen the software in use on the pretty dreadful book site The Book Forum, and it seemed to be pretty effective and feature-rich. I then headed over to the VBulletin site, where you can test drive using the forums and also the control panel – the complexity of which really makes it clear what a powerful piece of software this is.

So, I bought it and downloaded it and started to set it up. This is where I started to run into problems and should have planned much better. In many ways, I was very lucky as the import of data from the phpBB database into the vBulletin one was pretty seamless and meant that no data was lost. However, in my haste to get cracking, I had merely locked down the phpBB board and sent out an all-users email to warn people that changes were afoot, and letting them know that the forum URl was changing. What I should have done was develop the new site until it was completely finished, and then make the switch.

It wasn’t long before the complaints started to come in! To be honest, they were all very polite, but having had a difficult night getting the install and upload right (with tedious backing up in between) it made me bemoan rather than celebrate the loyalty of the Palimpsesters. Still, soon, with stylesheet modifications made things started to look more like home. The remaining issue was that the icon set that came with vBulletin was overly fussy and hard to distinguish. This was easily solved by using the icons from the phpBB installation – simple solutions being the best.

So, what makes vBulletin so much better? Firstly, security. New members now have to complete one of those graphical tests, typing in the letters on an image, to try and discourage false members signing up to promote a product or website automatically. Secondly, stability. The number of guest users has reduced dramatically, and not one error along the lines of the sessions one that so beleagured phpBB has been seen.

Thirdly, the features. I’ll run through some of the big ones quickly, at random: moderators can merge threads, sub-forums, wysiwyg post editing, retrieval of deleted posts, customisable user profiles and custom BB codes being just a few. The latter is great, we have created an icon on the wysiwyg editor that, when provided with an Amazon ASIN number, produces a link to the product in question that will credit the Palimpsest coffers if bought.

The other major aspect of vBulletin is the way it can be customised with good quality third party plugins. I use two, the vbAdvanced Portal which produced the dynamic front page, and their link manager which allows users to add links to a directory held on Palimpsest. Both work very well and were very simple to set up.

All in all, I think Palimpsest comes across as being a far more professional site than it did before. In the process of this it is possible that it has lost a little of its charm, sadly. I would like to think that the new features outweigh any disappointment though.

Still, lessons have been learned, most notably about keeping members better informed and also to get a working almost-100% complete site ready before unleashing it.