Java is the most exciting and dynamic software development platform on this planet. The lingua franca of the software industry, dynamic languages, rich multimedia, awesome scalability, desktop, server and mobile and embedded. We want to encourage and help the next generation of Ireland's programmers by working together with colleges to provide students with insight into the Java ecosystem and perspectives on life after school.

I was at an awesome presentation yesterday at JavaOne of the long tail of Java tools that not many people have come across, which I had to share. So, in no particular order, and with my own emotive comments:

• Apache Abdera - work easily with Atom feeds. See also Rome.
• Antlr - this parser generator can look daunting, but it's pretty easy once you get your head around it. Can be used to parse things like complex URLs where regexps are not up to the job.

Even if you aren't at JavaOne this year it doesn't mean you should miss out on the buzz! Daily keynotes and selected presentations are being broadcast here.

I will be blogging on the latest and greatest from JavaOne this week at jakubkorab.net with photos and roundup to follow right here. Also Twittering through jakekorab...

Sometimes it can be a little bit scary jumping off the deep end, but finally I cut the cord and dubjug.org is flying solo. Massive thanks must go out to Luan for all the work he put in to get this site up and running.

I'm looking forward to the things to come! Now all I have to do is work out how to post up events in Drupal ;)