The toyshop session on JavaOne is the session where we can see all the cool and geeky stuff made with Java in action. The presentation are a mix of presentations / goodies made by Sun engineers and the Duke Choice and winners.

Some of the winners were:

The guys from Terracotta. They provide an easy scalable platform for java applications and according to James they know more of the deep dark secrets of the JVM than anyone else, even the guys over at sun.

The game Runescape was also a winner. It’s a massive online role playing game fully based on Java. The created their own 3D editor, an animator tools to make everything as smooth as possible. All the tools they made and the game itself are all made in Java.

You can find a full list of all winners and their projects here.

The toys they showed us were also pretty cool. One of the nicest toys was a hack of a Nintendo wii nunchuck. The sun engineer was able to parse the data the nunchuck so he created an app that could follow a handheld canvas. On the canvas there was a small projector displaying. The projector beam seemed to move along with him when he walked around withe the canvas in his hands. Was the projector a part of the nunchuck or was it a separate motion controlled projector, I couldn’t tell. The app wasn’t just about following the canvas, it could also interpret certain motions and do something special. He displayed a playing card, like an ace of harts for example and when he flipped his canvas the back of the card was displayed, amazing!