The JavaOne Conference is over, and we at Sentilla are proud about what we accomplished, and excited for the future.

The last day of the conference is mostly about James Gosling's keynote, sometimes referred to as the "Gosling Toyshow". He uses this session to highlight the latest Java innovations in a cool, fun way. Our demo held true to this vision, and even added some audience participation to the mix. We instrumented beach balls with accelerometers and threw them into the crowd. The balls proceeded to take a beating (as you might expect!) and every push, punch and punt was measured for intensity. What's more, the relative location of the balls was tracked through the crowd and displayed on massive video screens in real-time in addition to the acceleration data. We gave beach balls a voice -- which they used to scream out in pain... Here's the video. Skip to 48:30 to see the presentation in full. It was a great end to a great conference, and all that was left for us was a final furry of Perk kit sales, and then the clean-up!

To recap, Sentilla was truly pervasive at JavaOne. The conference started with the introduction of Sentilla at the first general session. We were named a 2008 Duke's Award winner that same day. We had three booths at the conference. We released our Perk kit to the JavaOne audience. And we were showcased in the final keynote.

All in all, a fantastic JavaOne. We can't wait for next year!

Day Three at JavaOne brought more application ideas, and a video interview with Joe.

Here were the three coolest apps of the day:

• An equestrian was planning on monitoring the muscle temperature and stride of race horses galloping around a track, which can be used to determine the optimal time to race.
• Dishwashers in restaurants need to be calibrated so that they sterilize effectively; a customer was going to use the pervasive computers to determine when the washer is running at the proper temperature to ensure the dishes are completely clean before serving food on them.
• Underwater archaeologists were going to use the computer to tag the location and condition of submerged artifacts and communicate with the surface in real-time.

In addition, our co-founder and CTO Joe Polastre was interviewed by Chris Melissinos, Sun's Chief Gaming Officer, talking about the Duke's Choice award. The video was replayed on giant screens as people waited to get into the exhibit hall -- next stop Charlie Rose?

As mentioned by John Gage and James Gosling in the keynote on Tuesday, Sentilla has been monitoring the behavior of people in the Moscone Center. We know when they enter and leave each room and we know the environmental conditions in each room. Together, we have great data that is giving us a good sense of the resources we're using. For example, we can see each time the H/VAC system turns on, we can see an increase in temperature when people (where each person is the equivalent of a 100W light bulb) enter a room, and we can see when the Moscone Center forgets to turn off the lights at night. These are just a few of the interesting bits of information.

To explain this to the audience, Gosling held up a Sentilla pervasive computer in the opening remarks on Tuesday to illustrate how we're injecting intelligence into the real world. Gosling and Gage also showed data that we collected on Monday.

Rich Green followed Gage and Gosling with his keynote that featured Amazon, Sony Ericcson, and others. At the beginning, Green joked, "Jonathan Schwartz turned to me. I don't know if you saw the demo where people are counted going in and out of a room. He turned to me and said 'That's going to be your performance review for the year. I want to make sure that everybody stays throughout the session, and you'll get a pass.'"

Tomorrow, to close the conference, we're going to show the data and Green will get to see his performance review. To be specific, John Gage will show the data to the attendees when he opens Friday's keynote. But that's not all. Sentilla is going to make the audience part of a pervasive application during James Gosling's keynote, where I'll be on stage with Gosling to explain what Sentilla is doing. Be sure to show up and sit up front (or watch on the web) to see more of how we're engaging people and things around us, and how we're turning "dumb" objects into smart things.

Another great day at the conference!

Day two was really about cool ideas from customers at our booths. One of the great things about introducing pervasive computing to the Java Community is listening to the myriad new ideas that developers come up with. Some of my favorites so far:

• A person with an exotic fish collection wants to measure water temperature, salinity, pH, etc., and turn on devices that will maintain optimal conditions of his aquarium.
• A bicyclist wants to use the built-in accelerometer in our Perk kit devices to monitor his pedaling so that he can train at maximum efficiency.
• Giving "You've Got Mail" new meaning, a customer is going to put a light sensor in his mailbox so he can track when the postman delivers.
• John Gage (at right,) the MC of the JavaOne conference, bought a kit and spent nearly an hour at our booth churning out idea after idea. He's on a mission to help reduce needless energy waste and came up with about a dozen cool apps while just standing there (the guy is scary-smart...)
• Someone has a tandem car garage and wants to use a sensor to indicate when his car is perfectly spaced so that he can fit two vehicles at the same time and yet be able to walk between them.

I just have been working the upstairs booth where we're selling our Perk kit (only at the conference.) I'll add to the list when I get a chance to go downstairs and find out the cool ideas coming from the show floor itself!

The first day of JavaOne is over, and what a day it was!

The tone was set fairly immediately, when the opening Session of the entire conference highlighted Sentilla right out the gate. That's right: among the more than 200 exhibitors in the conference -- including major heavyweights like Oracle, Intel, Motorola -- Sentilla was the first company mentioned by Sun. That was really exciting. See for yourself from Sun's webcast replay (we're mentioned starting at 3:52.)

We were recognized for a demo that we created for the JavaOne conference itself. Specifically, we built an application that tracks the number of people that enter and leave any given technical or general session along with the temperature and humidity of each room. I'm sure a member of our crack engineering team will eventually share a blog post on exactly how it was done (because it is very cool and they worked really hard on it), but for me it was simply thrilling to realize that for thousands upon thousands of people this was their first real-world taste of real-world computing.

The ones conducting the session were John Gage, Chief Researcher and Director of the Science Office, and James Gosling, Sun Fellow and Vice President -- and huge Sentilla fan. Just getting either one of those guys to know your name is an accomplishment in and of itself; having them both start the conference holding up our pervasive computers was flat-out amazing and a testament to how we're changing the world.

This was a sign of things to come. We have three specific booths at JavaOne: our main booth in "Startup Alley" (booth 1224-2), a booth in the Java Playground, and a booth at the Show Device counter. All of our booths were pretty much swamped all day and evening. At one point in the morning there were about sixty people crowding around our one little area were I was (Show Device.) So busy, but so cool! It was just wonderful to share everything we've worked on this past year to an audience that was clearly excited to hear about it.

The day was pretty much non-stop in terms of traffic. However, we did take a moment to gather as a team as Joe was given a Duke's Choice Award by James Gosling in the early evening. The Duke's Choice reflects true innovations in Java technology and are determined by Gosling personally along with a special team of experts. Given how effusive Gosling has been about our technology, we weren't altogether surprised to learn that we had won. Still, it's always great to be recognized for hard work, and that's certainly how we see it.

The day was even more exciting than I've been able to properly convey in this post. But if you consider that it started with a shout-out from John Gage and James Gosling in front of the entire conference, and ended with a presitigious Duke's Choice Award, you get the idea. We can barely wait until Day Two.

Let's just say that the coolest thing today at JavaOne was Sentilla.

Today is just Day 1! We have tons planned for the next few days. Stay tuned.

"The coolest thing I saw today was Sentilla"

Way more updates coming...

I had the pleasure of receiving the Duke Award tonight for Sentilla. The Duke Award is given by James Gosling, the father of Java, and is the biggest award that a company can receive. The Duke Award is the only award given out at JavaOne, a conference with hundreds of exhibitors and over 15,000 attendees. The Duke Award goes to Sentilla!

Congrats to Sentilla and the Sentilla team. We have achieved something that no other company has done--putting a full Java system on 8-bit and 16-bit microcontrollers. We have opened this world up to Java programmers, a huge accomplishment. On behalf of myself and Rob and Cory, we are so proud of "achieving the impossible". I remember when, 3 years ago, our advisors told us that Java was not possible on miniature pervasive computers. 10kb memory and Java? Yes. We proved Java is possible and the way to go. Today is a proud day -- we have proved everyone wrong. We have put Java on the world's smallest computers. Java runs with no compromises -- we have not pared anything back. If your application runs on any other certified Java ME system, it will work with Sentilla.

James Gosling talking about the impact of Java while giving Sentilla the Duke Award...

JavaOne doesn't start until tomorrow, but today we saw a ton of people here at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Sun held their annual CommunityOne open developers conference, and Sentilla was there. What attendees didn't expect was that Sentilla's pervasive computers are watching their every move. Keep an eye out for Sentilla as you walk through the Moscone Center.

I spent time today talking to John Gage, Sun's Chief Researcher, about pervasive computing. As many of you know, John opens every keynote session with facts and observations about Java and the conference. Last year he issued a call to monitor and react to our environment by gathering, analyzing, and acting on real data from "small devices". "Because we have these small devices, we have the tools in place ... that all of us realize is our fundamental duty to take these devices and apply them to human end. To make visible what is invisible, our impact on the planet," Gage said.

John is opening Tuesday's keynote session with Rich Green (where Neil Young will be making an appearance). Be sure to attend, John just might let you know how Sentilla has answered John's call to better understand the world around us.

Not going to JavaOne? No problem! JavaOne sessions are broadcast online.

As Joe mentioned in the last blog post, we're releasing a new development kit to go along with the first public release of our software. Next week, anyone can go to JavaOne and walk out with a Perk Kit and a copy of our java-based pervasive computing software. And while the software is what really makes our platform special, right now I want to focus on the new hardware. As one of the engineers here, I've been dying to get my hands on the new JCreates. We're really proud of this device and are super excited to see what developers are going to start creating with it. In fact, yesterday one of our founders remarked, "This is the best mote ever created." So, without further ado, the unboxing pics:

The front of the box. Special JavaOne price of $199.

Back of the box. Very shiny.

When opening the box, you're greeted with our excellent quick start guide. You'll be up and running in minutes (a first for pervasive computing.)

Contents: two Jcreates, one USB gateway, one firmware programmer, CD with Sentilla Work IDE, quickstart guide, and four batteries.

Could it be any easier?

This is where the magic is.

The new Jcreate mote. Notice the ports on the side that allow you to plug in a sensor. No soldering required.

Thats a good looking logo.

A power switch on a mote. How novel! An exposed header on the other end for even more expandability.

The side ports. Check out Phidgets Inc. for some examples of sensors that can plug in here.

The USB gateway.

The entire contents. Stop by our booth at JavaOne, pick one of these up, and start changing the world!

Today, I'm really really really excited to announce Sentilla Perk. Sentilla brings pervasive computing to the masses with Sentilla's software, consisting of the world's smallest Java Mobile Edition (Java ME) system coupled with Sentilla's pervasive computing application framework. All of Sentilla's software is wrapped up in Sentilla Perk, our Pervasive Computing Kit. Perk enables you to try out and demo Sentilla's software on real hardware, build pervasive applications, and shape the future of pervasive computing. See the full press release from Sentilla, and the press release from Sun Microsystems.

Perk, combined with Sentilla's software, is so cool and innovative that Sun has named Sentilla Perk an official JavaOne show device. The show device is a huge honor for us; only show devices are allowed to be sold directly at the show, and Sun promotes them as being the best of the best. We are really excited and can't wait until next week to get Perk into people's hands! We've worked out a deal with Sun and JavaOne to offer Perk to conference attendees for $199 (only available at JavaOne). You have to go to the Show Device Kiosk in the South Upper Lobby at the Moscone Center to pick one up, and you must be a registered JavaOne conference attendee.

I've been dying to announce this for at least 2 months. Lots of people want to kick the tires, try it out, and see just how powerful Java technology is on wireless embedded systems. There's an even larger number of people that have some very innovative and world changing pervasive applications that they want to build. Perk is the starting point to get moving on those ideas. And that's what's even more exciting -- Perk is just the beginning; Sentilla has a ton more software, management, and services available to our customers.

Perk includes 3 pervasive computers -- 2 JCreate nodes and 1 USB Gateway. JCreate is built using Sentilla Mini, our tiny OEM hardware module bundled with Sentilla Point, our Java-based pervasive runtime environment. JCreate includes a three-axis accelerometer with configurable sensitivity, a temperature sensor, 2 ports for Phidgets (more about that in a later post), an expansion for other sensors (like GPS, analog, and digital sensors), an integrated antenna, 8 LEDs, and comes in an enclosure that holds 2 AAA batteries. In fact, Sentilla's engineers are so excited by Perk, they've been fighting over who gets the first kits!

Perk also includes Sentilla Work, our Integrated Development Environment based on Eclipse. If you're a Java programmer, you already know Eclipse, and you'll be up and running in minutes. We've also thrown in the Sentilla Host Server, which manages the interaction between Java-based clients (or any client for that manner) and the pervasive computing network. Now you can share Java objects across applications running on pervasive computers like JCreate, mobile phones running J2ME, and desktops and servers running J2SE. All these different devices are part of one unified network. Cool! Curious about how that works? That detail is part of my technical session on Thursday May 8th at 9:30am.

You also get access to Sentilla's Developer Community, with forums, code, samples, and community support. We're posting some secret cool Java applications to the developer community as an extra special bonus for those that buy Perk at JavaOne.

We've ramped up production and are prepared to distribute kits to JavaOne attendees. You can see our pile of Perk kits on the right. Even though we have a bunch of kits ready, Sun is expecting over 15,000 attendees. We've been asked by Sun to sell Perk on a first-come-first-served basis, so be sure to pick one up early before they're gone.

There's lots more Perk related news on the horizon; stay tuned for some more blog posts with juicy Perk details in the few days leading up to JavaOne. Any questions about Perk? What do you think of it? Post your thoughts in the comments.