Nokia has submitted Java Specification Request 256, Mobile Sensor API, to the Java Community Process. "This specification will define a generic sensor API for the J2ME applications, delivered and licensed as an optional package. The API will offer unified way of managing sensors, connected to the mobile devices, and easy access to the sensor data. The J2ME applications will be able to configure and control sensors transparently from underlying connectivity protocols, e.g. activate, deactivate sensor, launch sensor discovery, start data sampling, etc."
Sun's posted the first alpha of the NetBeans Integrated Development Environment (IDE) 4.1. (No, you didn't miss something. 4.0 is not out of beta yet.) This early access release is available for Windows, Linux, and Solaris (but not Mac OS X). New features in version 4.1 focus on Enterprise JavaBeans and Web Services. Final release is planned for April, 2005. Java 1.4.2 or later is required.
Oracle has released final specification of Java Specification Request (JSR) 73 Data Mining API. According to the spec,
In JDM, data mining [Mitchell1997, BL1997] includes the functional areas of classification, regression, attribute importance 1, clustering, and association. These are supported by such supervised and unsupervised learning algorithms as decision trees, neural networks, Naive Bayes, Support Vector Machine, K-Means, and Apriori, on structured data. Common operations include model build, test, and apply (score). A particular implementation of this specification may not necessarily support all interfaces and services defined by JDM. However, JDM provides a mechanism for client discovery of supported interfaces and capabilities.
JDM is based on a generalized, object-oriented, data mining conceptual model leveraging emerging data mining standards such the Object Management Group’s Common Warehouse Metadata (CWM), ISO’s SQL/MM for Data Mining, and the Data Mining Group’s Predictive Model Markup Language (PMML), as appropriate
Implementation details of JDM are delegated to each vendor. A vendor may decide to implement JDM as a native API of its data mining product. Others may opt to develop a driver/adapter that mediates between a core JDM layer and multiple vendor products. The JDM specification does not prescribe a particular implementation strategy, nor does it prescribe performance or accuracy of a given capability or algorithm.