Last Week: Java Store, PayPal and Happy Developers
Whew, last week was crazy busy. I’ll admit, though, that the chaos was of our own making and something we put a lot of effort into planning and carrying out. When I say “we” here I mean a bunch of hard working, dedicated folks at Sun Microsystems who have been hammering away for almost a year designing and building the Java Store. No, it’s not a place to go buy coffee, but instead a storefront that can run on your desktop computer to help you discover and acquire compelling applications written in Java and JavaFX. It’s still in beta but is nonetheless open for business (with a few limitations), so you can find out more and sign up to take part.
This past Tuesday we unveiled an update to the Java Store that enables consumers to purchase applications, powered by a partnership between Sun and PayPal. By using some nifty new services launched simultaneously by PayPal we can make paying for software in the Java Store quick and easy, which nicely complements the quick and easy (and unique) browsing and installing features already there. All this unveiling and launching happened at “Innovate 09”, PayPal’s first ever conference for their developer community.
In addition to being part of the Java Store product team I’ve also developed an application that is now for sale in the Java Store. Developers like me submit their applications to the Java Store via the Java Warehouse, which also helps manage updates, payments, taxes, and all sorts of operations behind the scenes. I wrote my app mostly to help with testing, but it has been and continues to be a lot of fun.
All that came together this past week — conference preparations, finalizing arrangements with PayPal, testing my application and getting it submitted, and then the excitement of the launch itself. Thanks to a great job by the entire Java Store team and the folks at PayPal it all went flawlessly (though was exhausting).
Hats off to PayPal, by the way, for an outstanding job organizing and hosting Innovate 09. They put on a first class event with attention to all the details and made clear they truly value their developers. Nothing said that more than the human chain of happy, cheering PayPal employees that stretched and guided a parade of happy developers four blocks from the conference site to the Tuesday evening celebration. Moreover, they gave every registered attendee an Asus Eee PC pre-loaded with the Java Store and the full set of PayPal developer tools.
There’s much more to come, obviously. We’re continuing to expand the Java Store beta program so more developers and consumers can get involved. We hope you’ll sign up and join us. Meanwhile I have work ahead to track sales and revenue from the application I’ve already submitted and have ideas for a couple more to add. And I have a new Asus netbook to experiment with and enjoy.
