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.