Hello folks. Back again with more info on great products from Sun Microsystems. This morning I logged into my windows OS after a long time, actually by mistake. And since it had started booting, i was too lazy to stop and reboot. So i decided to work using XP itself. Knowing that nothing worth can be done using XP, i was just exploring the contents of a CD that I recently got and was really happy to find a copy of Looking Glass, a project from Sun, in that CD. I had learnt about that project just a couple of weeks back from my friend.
Looking glass is a software written in Java and comes as a Jar. Actaully, Looking Glass creates a 3D environment and has a few good utilities, including a media player. Had I got a better RAM space, it would have been a greater experience for me. The desktop wallpaper could be changed using an option that shows up as a 3D circle by default. That apart, all appliations open up, work and close with some 3D effects. In short, it has got all that Windows Vista boasts of and that comes free of cost and again it is just an software that can be installed and uninstalled as you please. It is not a whole new OS that is meant only for visual effects( In my opinion, Vista is one such OS – developed for visual effects alone).
Another tool from Sun that I tried out today is the JXTA. Actually, it came bundled with the Looking Glass thing and the Looking Glass has a link to this JXTA from within. JXTA is a new communication tool that connects all sorts of devices like the PDAs, computers, laptops etc. It uses various protocols for doing that. This software, i hope has been coded using Java Swing. It shows a list of peers with whom we can chat. It also has facilities to join in to groups and to share data or media. But I have not explored this tool fully and so need more time to do that.
Hope i will try other Sun tools as well as because I feel that every tool from sun is really great and that every tool will have its unique application. Moreover, unlike Microsoft, Sun microsystems supports FOSS and hence its code can be accessed by all. This will help in learning languages like Java with which these softwares have been developed.