Much is being talked about 'innovation' in the technology circles. Enterprises are working on innovative solutions to better processes for a higher return-on-investments (ROI). Platform providers are innovating to deliver better performing systems in the hands of developers; developers are thinking out-of-the-box to deliver innovative applications for the benefit of end users.

Java gurus John Gage, Scott McNealy, and James Gosling addressing a group of Java enthusiast at JavaOne 2006 urged them to 'forget the box' and improve and change the world with their innovations.

Here's a glimpse of Java innovations that were showcased at JavaOne 2006.

Showcasing Java's reach in the healthcare industry, Fausto Espinal a visualization engineer at GE Healthcare demonstrated the use of Java technology on the desktop. His team has developed an application that can render medical images, showing 2D and 3D renderings of human physical structures such as the skull, brain, and skeletal system. His product helps physicians visualize, diagnose, and treat illnesses.

Java based code-refactoring tool Jackpot can help programmers refine their code. Elaborating on the product's features, Tom Ball, a senior staff engineer at Sun Microsystems, demonstrated how to create rules for finding and removing unnecessary casting in code. This tool can perform flow analysis and refactor Java programming language code to make it simple, quick, and easy to read. It can also make large-scale changes to your code while maintaining functionality.

Members of the NetBeans Software Mobility team at Sun, Petr Suchomel and Martin Brehovsky demonstrated Java's reach in the mobile phone development. They showcased their server-to-cell phone tracking system that can provide the status of shipped packages while in-transit. The Java application on running on cellphones can consume remote web services, showing the status of customer orders in transit using a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system.

Delivering better quality graphics components to the developers of mobile applications is the JSR 209 that defines a Swing, Java 2D, and imaging subset that will bring high-quality graphics components to developers of mobile applications. According to Sun, JSR 209 specification offers new Swing components, antialiased fonts, gradients, 2D transforms, and opacity features that were previously unavailable. Nedim Fresko and Hinkmond Wong, senior staff engineers at Sun Microsystems, demonstrated applications on the SavaJe phone that make use of these new features. They demonstrated how threading works, running a music player at the same time as scrolling through the features of a separate application.

Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems, Greg Bollella, described the real-time garbage-collection features of the Sun Java Real-Time System (Java RTS). His demo application showed two video players streaming video from the server, one using a regular communication port on the server and one using a real-time port. As he simulated increasing loads on the server, the video player using a regular communication port began to lag, showing jerky, stalling video from the server. However, the video player attached to the real-time port continued to show smooth streaming video.

Showcasing innovation in the automobile sector was Tommy – an unmanned, autonomous Java technology-powered dune buggy. Paul Perrone of Perrone Robotics drove his autonomous ground vehicle (AGV), Tommy, onto the show floor. Developed Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) and Java ME technology to control the vehicle's throttle, brakes, steering, vision, radar, and GPS systems, Tommy competed in the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) Grand Challenge recently. Click here to  read more about Tommy.