Sun to unveil Jini in January

Let the "I love Jini" jokes begin: Sun Microsystems president and CEO ScottMcNealy announced Wednesday that his company will debut its Jini technologyon January 25th. Jini is a Java-based distributed computing model that provides the infrastructure for pervasive networking. In other words, Jiniobjects--which can be cameras, computers, printers, whatever--will have ameans of identifying themselves whenever they're connected to a network,so that they can be used anywhere and everywhere. The concept behind Jiniis that the network is not centrally managed but rather run like a "singlesbar" where objects would arrive, announce themselves, and seek out otherobjects.

Sun is positioning Jini as the solution to my "Windows Era Is Over" opinionpiece from a few weeksback; It is the central piece in a larger puzzle that could quite possiblychange the way everyone interfaces with computers.

And, on that note, Microsoft is of course working on their own COM-basedinfrastructure that would do the same thing. The reason Jini is so exciting, however, is that it is based on an open standard--Java--and is(almost) ready today.

For more information about Jini, please visit the Jini Web site