What about Java Card? Well, now is the right time to give a new light on Java Card. There has been a tendency to label the Java Card technology as a consumer technology, just because a smart card is a small token, which usually sits in the pocket of end users. That may be true, but there is another vision of it: customers don’t own the smart cards in their pockets; a smart card remains the property of its issuer. And if you think of a smart card with the issuer’s mind, you can think of it either as a single customer record in a very large database, or as an authentication token that authorizes the user to access a database. In both cases, it is actually server technology.

Java Card 3.0 actually confirms that, as we propose servlets rather than MIDlets or other client-side APIs. A Java Card 3.0 application is quite likely to be a local part of a much larger server infrastructure, and I am quite convinced that even Oracle can find some value there.

We’ll see. I am not sure that next week’s Java Card Forum meeting will bring much news, but JavaOne will definitely be interesting.

Brian Kowal, is Sun’s latest marketing person for Java Card, and he is giving the keynote. Here are a few snippets from his presentation.

First, a few numbers (I always have problems getting up-to-date numbers, so let’s write these down). 4.3 billion Java Card have been issued so far, still growing 10-15% every year. This is more than Windows, and even more than MIDP.

As part of the Sun presentation, Brian also gave us a definition of Web 3.0, which in Sun’s view is “context”, where Web 2.0 was “collaboration”. We of course can compare it to Gemalto’s definition, in their early Java Card 3 presentations. If I remember well, they were insisting on the local/personal/always available aspect: you have a Web server in your pocket. These two definitions are definitely close to each other, because a mash-up between your personal information and a Web information definitely brings more context in the content.

Another interesting slide title in that presentation: “Java Card turns any device into your device”. This is definitely what the SIM is about, and what mobile phone manufacturers don’t like about it.

After a technical overview of Java Card 3, Brian discussed use cases. Of course, he talked about NFC-enabled phones and the set-top boxes. But he also mentioned more original use cases:

• The memory card with Java Card 3.0, and with wireless netorking of some kind, to be used in digital cameras. For professionals, Java Card 3 can of course protect the content in many ways, from watermarking to encryption, and direct DRM encapsulation. For amateurs, it can connect directly to social networks, protect the privacy of users, etc.
• Replace the TPM in your PC with a more powerful Java Card 3.0 chip, in order to offer additional authentication schemes, to host additional services (payment and more, or to offer a usable pre-boot security interface.
• The LiveScribe pen, which is able to record what you are writing and what you are saying, Java Card could provide some privacy and security, allowing the content to be encrypted (well, that could be a Java Card 2/Classic application).

Let’s do these things …