jphone.org - 2008 September 03

A company called 3rd Dimension has unveiled their application that allows access to live traffic cameras in select cities across the country, via your mobile phone. The program currently works on some BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Java J2ME... units.

Happy Wednesday everyone! I have seemed to have caught the head cold that is going around, but it isn't holding me down too much. I am very much plugging through all things JavaFX and I am getting super excited for all the things we have to show you! Oh and I also wanted to point out that we have a very cool contest going on at the moment! There is a new student contest where participating students can earn up to $500 by developing a web application using MYSQL and GlassFish, creating a java.net project of their application and writing a review of these products. For all the details, please go here. Pretty sweet for you students out there!

As I have been mentioning in previous blog postings, music is always playing when I am working (unless of course, I am in meetings or on concalls) and it pretty much consumes much of my life. I have been a *huge* fan of my artist of the week for a long while, and this week, I am here to tell you all about Ryan Adams. My love for Mr. Adams started back when he was a founding member of Whiskeytown (which, BTW, how awesome of a band name is that?!) and has grown and grown over the years.

Adams' first foray into music was with his high school punk band, Patty Duke Syndrome and was fuelled by influences such as the Dead Kennedys and Sonic Youth. However, first experiences of love-turned-sour converted Adams to country and folk as he searched for a musical genre which could embody his feelings. In this spirit, Whiskeytown was formed in 1994 with Caitlin Cary, Phil Wandscher, Eric "Skillet" Gilmore and Steve Grothman.

After only two albums, 'Faithless Street' and 'Strangers Almanac', and beset by personnel changes, the band began to disintegrate, partly because of artistic and personal differences, partly because of an inability to meet the fans' expectations as result of alcohol and drug excesses. ("Well, we were called Whiskeytown!' was Adams' riposte.) Nevertheless, Adams' image as trouble starter served him well and his popularity survived the demise of the band. After a period of introspection, he began working on his own songs and honing his musicianship by jamming in after-hours bars with friends Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. It was during these jamming sessions, Ryan Adams, the alt-country star was born.

Ryan has released a slew of amazing albums both as a solo artist and as part of The Cardinals. For a complete list of all that he has released and more, check out his discography here. I can't even imagine picking a favorite album out of his entire collection, but lately, I have been putting all of them on shuffle and listening until my heart is content. I was poking around the web the other day and ran across an amazing live version of his song, "Two" that he performed on the Late Show with David Letterman in June 2007. "Two" is track off his latest album, 'Easy Tiger', which was released around the same time he was on Letterman. Please enjoy the video of him performing this beautiful song and make sure to go and give Ryan Adams a whole hearted listen. Your ears will thank you..and then thank you again. Enjoy!