There was apparently some serious Ajax envy and angst at JavaOne. But also some cool stuff, reminding us that Java had the vision of rich web apps long ago, and is still a great platform for building network-enabled apps with great front-ends. aerith is “a roadtrip slideshow builder that combines Google Maps, Flickr, and Yahoo Geocode to let you make your own slideshow of photos you took on your trip. Once you are [done] setting up the slideshow you can share the trip with your friends as an applet.”
It’s often frustrating to early developers with big visions when something later comes along and steals their thunder by offering far less. But there’s a lesson here: as Donald Knuth says, premature optimization is the root of all evil. And that doesn’t just apply to performance, it applies to design. It’s impossible to think through what people are going to want to do until they start doing it, so sometimes it’s best to seed the market with a hack that gets people going, and then follow up as you watch what they do with it.