Michael Yuan

I just received a hard copy of my book “Seam Framework” from my publisher today. That means you should be able to get it from Amazon and Barnes and Noble very soon.

The book is the “second edition” of the original JBoss Seam book I wrote back in 2006, which was a JavaOne and Amazon best seller. But, it is much more than a “sequel” of the original book, my co-author Jacob Orshalick has made many major contributions to the book to address the latest and greatest features in Seam and WebBeans. Check it out!

The picture shows both the original “JBoss Seam” book and the “Seam Framework” book side by side — the photo on the cover of the original book was taken by Ju during our trip to the Death Valley in 2005.

In a related story, my friend Norman Richards (also a core developer on the Seam team) spotted the Chinese translation of the original Seam book while he was in vacation in China last month. Now, anyone in China wants to buy one and send to me?

Apple announced the iPhone SDK today. I have to say that the demos are very impressive and the “app store” concept is very well thought of — it gets around the carrier and lets Apple become the “deck” for iPhone applications. I am sure that mobile developers would much rather work with Apple than with wireless carriers!

Now, with the $100m iFund bounty, I am sure every mobile developer is learning Object C as we speak and race to develop the coolest iPhone application now. But what kind of applications should you write? What kind of applications can best take advantage of the native SDK capabilities?

Some applications, for example our SXSW Mobile Companion: http://webclip2go.com/sxsw08, is quite sufficient as an iPhone rich web application — the additional hurdle of having to download the native app may not pay off.

Well, an obvious place to search for cool application ideas is the native application landscape for other smartphone devices! You can then adopt / optimize those applications for the iPhone! To see what people have done on the Nokia Symbian platform, and give yourself some inspiration on your big iPhone application, come to my SXSW book reading on this Sat for the Nokia Smartphone Hacks book!

For those who cannot attend, I will post the slides later this week …

Michael Yuan
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SXSW 08 Mobile Companion
http://webclip2go.com/sxsw08 (iphone simulator)

Dr Dobb’s Journal’s Jolt award is one of the longest running and most prestigious awards in the software industry. The 18th Jolt Award is now open for nominations:

http://www.joltnominations.com/Jolt/

Hint: If you develop tools for mobile applications, Jolt does have a category for mobile tools. I will participate in this category heavily this year.

To be qualified for Jolts, you have to submit your own product — there is a small submission fee ($50 for open source projects) to cover admin costs. As a Jolt judge for the past several years, I can tell you that none of the judges is paid. We are all volunteers contributing our time for free to go through the complicated software evaluation process. What do we get out of it? Well, we get exposure to the latest happenings in the industry and get to put “Jolts Judge” on our name cards.

What do you get out of it? Well, if your product wins Jolts, that gives you some major bragging right! Even if your product does not win, by participating in the process, you get Jolt judges (most of them are consultants influencing purchasing decisions) to look carefully at your product. If some of the judges like your product, they might blog about it or recommend it in their consulting work.

In the past several years, we got an overwhelming number of submissions every year. It is nearly impossible to evaluate each of them in detail, if the judges are not already using the product in his/her daily work. So, it will be enormously helpful if you can prepare a flash or live demo of your product to illustrate the key features that differentiates your product from the rest.

I have just updated all the 17 sample applications in my JBoss Seam book to JBoss AS 4.2.0 GA (w/ Seam 1.2.1 GA). You can now download the sample projects for both JBoss AS 4.0.5 and 4.2.0. If you find those examples useful, I’d appreciate if you can buy a copy of the book as well.

Since a lot of people seem to be confused about this, let me list the steps you need to convert a Seam application from JBoss AS 4.0.5 to JBoss AS 4.2.0:

1. Edit the resources/WEB-INF/web.xml file, and remove the MyFaces listener.

2. Edit the resources/META-INF/application.xml file, and remove the modules referencing el-api.jar and el-ri.jar.

3. Remove the el-api.jar and el-ri.jar files from the final application archive (edit the build.xml file for the ear or war tasks).

4. Edit the resources/WEB-INF/faces-config.xml file and add the SeamELResolver using the new JSF 1.2 XML schema declaration.

Do NOT miss the crucial step of removing el-*.jar from both the application and from the application.xml. If you do not remove those JARs and their references, your application will hang on JBoss AS 4.2.0 GA with a cryptic error message (before you ask, yes, we are fixing it). So, be aware!!

Note: Evidentially, the Seam security package still has some residue dependency on the Sun EL RI package. So, you might consider leaving el-ri.jar in the app if you use those features. It is confirmed to work in JBoss AS 4.2.1 GA. See comments below.

Okay, now the “JBoss Seam” book is not only a top 10 best seller in JavaOne 2007. It is also an Amazon.com #19 best seller in the “Computer Programming — Java” category! Since Amazon lists more than 2500 books in the category, that makes it top 1%. I’d like to congratulate myself here. Here is proof:

My new JBoss Seam book came out just in time for the JavaOne conference. The publisher (Prentice Hall) brought 5 copies of the book for display in their booth as well as in the Red Hat booth. Well, before the day’s end, we only have 2 copies left! The display copies are simply disappearing from the booth as people walked by!

It is hard to imagine that people paying $5000+ to attend JavaOne would “steal” a $40 book on the show. They probably think that the display copies are vendor freebies? But then, this does not seem to happen to other books and certainly never happened in the vendor booths I had worked in the past 3 JavaOne conferences (we have books on display every year)!

Anyway, we will be running out of display copies very soon at this rate. But here is a tip: there are plenty copies in the JavaOne official book store — along side with my Java ME best seller “Enterprise J2ME”. So, bring it on! Go steal that book!

PS. That just remind me an episode a year ago when my “Nokia Smartphone Hacks” book made the “daily most downloaded book” on popular BitTorrent site Mininova. Well, I am flattered and offended at the same time!

I finally put up a web page for the “JBoss Seam: Simplicity and Power Beyond Java EE 5.0″ book. The page has the source code download link for the example applications in the book. Have fun!

Please use this thread to report problems / bugs with the code. Thanks. We can still make changes to the book!

Just a quick note to let you know that my “Nokia Smartphone Hacks” (O’Reilly Hacks Series) book is now available for immediate shipping at amazon.

The book is about how to make the most out of your mobile phones. No more using your $400 phone like a $10 “tin can telephone”! Check out a list of “hacks” covered in the book here. None of them requires you to take apart your phone.

You can read some sample hacks from the O’Reilly web site. While most of the “hacks” in the book target Nokia phones, the basic technique applies to almost all phones on the market.

OK, I finally get a hard copy of my new book: “Developing Scalable Nokia Series 40 Applications”.

Special thanks go to the Nokia Series 40 team — for building a massively successful platform with more than 100 million users and for helping out with this book. The book starts from basic MIDP programming and provides in-depth coverage specific to Nokia Series 40 and Series 60 phones. Using the developer platforms, design patterns and development management processes, we try to attack the most common problem that faces J2ME developers today — to develop applications that can scale across many different devices from the low end to the high end. To learn more about the book, make sure that you read Top 10 reasons to buy Michael’s new book! at the end of this post.

Now about the guy on the cover … No, he is neither me nor Kevin. We do not know who he is — so do not ask us for phone numbers! I only wish I were that handsome!

In case you need any more convincing, here are “Letterman-style” top 10 reasons why you must buy this book (for you, your spouse, your kids, your dog … and every member of your extended family!

1. Advance your career: If you work in the IT industry, you need to constantly think about what’s next to stay ahead of the curve! Wireless and mobility are not the “next big thing” — they already took off big time today in both the consumer and enterprise space. Go with the leaders! The book is your guide.

2. 100+ million consumers cannot be wrong: Nokia Series 40 devices are used by more than 100 million affluent consumers. Don’t you want to make a killing selling your best products to them? The book teaches you the necessary skills.

3. Then there are the 10+ million Nokia Series 60 users: Notice the word “scalable” in the title? The book covers the higher end Nokia Series 60 devices as well. Those devices are bought by gadget lovers who are ready to spend money on their phones. Make the killing now!

4. Put your fancy cell phone to work! Are you using your fancy Nokia phone only to make voice calls? Stop wasting money! You can make voice calls from any $3 phone from Walmart. Put your phone to work by writing some cool applications for it! Email, web, game, streaming TV, multimedia … you name it. They are all covered in the book!

5. Motorola and Sony-Ericson users are welcome: Although the book focuses on Nokia devices, the underlying technology, Java, is portable. It applies to most Motorola, Sony-Ericsson, Samsung and other phones in the market today.

6. It is only $50: Admit it! you spend more than that every month on the phone bill alone.

7. It is brought to you by Addison-Wesley: AW is the biggest (and one of the most reputable) computer book and college text book publisher in the world. If you attended college, you already have several books from them.

8. It has a Nokia logo on it: As a symbol for design and quality, the Nokia brand is among the top ten most valuable brands in the world. It is bigger than Disney. After all, if you would buy a storybook because it has a Disney logo, why not buy this one with the Nokia logo? This book carries the Nokia logo because it is fully reviewed and approved by the Nokia product teams.

9. It looks cool in your study: This is a nice, thick book that shows your knowledge and taste. Display it on the shelf! Brag about it! Place it right next to the encyclopedia!

10. Written by yours truly: OK, show some real friendship and vote with your wallet!