Juergen Hoeller has announced that Spring 3.0.3 is now available. This minor release addresses over 100 minor issues and catches up with some recent third-party releases.

Download | Documentation | Javadoc API | Change Log | JIRA

Please note that we are not providing a dependencies download anymore. The recommended way of obtaining third-party libraries for use with Spring is Maven/Ivy; you could also download third-party distributions of your choice and take the jars from there. Note that there is no reason to upgrade third-party libraries unless you want to: The simplest solution is to keep using the versions that you know and trust.

Don’t forget that Spring users can ask questions in the community forum and identify issues in JIRA as well.

Jonathan Schwartz was considered a longshot to stay at Sun after its acquisition by Oracle.

Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz, an advocate of Web 2.0, used Twitter early Thursday to announce his resignation. He was named CEO in 2006 as Sun faced a switch in strategic direction away from proprietary systems and toward open source code, including its valued Solaris 10 operating system.

“Today’s my last day at Sun. I’ll miss it,” he said in a tweet to his followers, reported the New York Times on its Web site at 1:12 a.m. Thursday. He added a bit of haiku: “Financial crisis, Stalled too many customers, CEO no more.”

Schwartz was the first CEO of a major company to use the blogging format to announce his positions and comment on issues in the industry. He advocated that blogs be given the same status as press releases with the Securities Exchange Commission. The New York Times observed that he’s the first Fortune 200 executive to use Twitter to announce his resignation.

Read the whole article on Information Week.

SpringSource is looking for some talented engineers to join the team of experts in the Research and Development group. If you enjoy challenging, genuinely rewarding roles that offer unique opportunities to work with industry leading technologists on open source based projects and products, then be sure to take a look at the following positions:

• Software Engineer – SpringSource System Test Strategies (North East US)
• Member of Technical Staff – SpringSource Tools Developer (San Francisco, CA)
• Sr. Member of Technical Staff – SpringSource Tools Developer (Vancouver, Canada)
• Sr. Member of Technical Staff – SpringSource Grails Developer (Eastern US)
• Sr. Member Technical Staff – Java Server-Side Developer (San Francisco, CA)
• Sr. Member Technical Staff – Java Server-Side Developer (San Francisco, CA)

Spring 3.0.0 Release Candidate 1 Now Available

Submitted by Adam Fitzgerald on Fri, 2009-09-25 14:31 in News and Announcements

This news just in from Arjen Poutsma‘s twitter feed: Spring 3.0.0.RC1 is now available.

Download | Javadoc API | Change Log

Thank you to all of the dedicated community members that have given feedback and identified issues. Please keep up the good work as we push toward GA.

Google has announced that its implementation of the OpenID login standard, Google OpenID Federated Login API, has been extended to support Google Apps. This will allow individuals who have accounts on a service or application deployed by a business, school or other organization on Apps to use their login credentials on any site that supports OpenID. This should greatly boost the standard’s reach but there are those in the community who are apprehensive about Google’s approach.

“Google Apps can now become an identity hub for multiple SaaS providers, simplifying identity management for organizations. For example, when integrated with partner solutions such as PingConnect from Ping Identity, the Google Open ID Federated Login API enables a single Google Apps login to help provide secure access to services like Salesforce.com, SuccessFactors, and WebEX — as well as B2B partners, internal applications, and of course consumer web sites,” Yariv Adan, Google Security Team, wrote on the Google Code blog.

OpenID aims to provide a unified login experience over various services online by allowing users to have just one set of credentials that would work on any site. There are a number of similar products, some proprietary, like Facebook Connect, but also open standards, but OpenID is the open-source project that shows the most promise. The major problem for it, and other similar products, is that most people, even the tech savvy, find it hard to understand and cumbersome to use and this has generally staved off growth.

So a move like Google’s, which boasts one million domain names on Apps, should be very welcomed by OpenID. However, it’s not what the search giant is doing but how it’s doing it that has risen the greatest number of concerns. In order to provide the functionality the company had to use a non-standard library. The extension, developed by Janrain, allows relying parties, the sites that will allow Google Apps users to login with those credentials, to redirect to the Google OpenID service.

The new Carnival Dream will take seagoing technology to a new level with the introduction of the FunHub, a comprehensive shipboard intranet portal featuring the cruise industry’s first onboard social network, along with access to a wide variety of information on the ship’s services, facilities and daily activities. The 130,000-ton vessel, Carnival’s largest ship, is set to debut Sept. 21.

Access to the FunHub will be available via 36 state-of-the-art stations located on decks 3, 4 and 5, including 12 within Ocean Plaza, Carnival Dream’s indoor/outdoor cafe and entertainment venue.

The FunHub locations will provide guests with free and convenient access to an informative ship-specific intranet portal, and an exclusive shipboard social network, both of which will be available on a 24/7 basis. Guests may also access the sites via their personal laptops or via 10-inch netbooks that are available for rent and can be used anywhere onboard.

Carnival Dream’s onboard social network mirrors the experience one finds on other social networking sites. Guests can create a personal profile and use the application to meet and interact with others onboard, send and receive private messages, create groups based on interests, and invite friends to attend shows or participate in onboard events. Guests can also create their own private or public discussion group, inviting others in their traveling party or friends they meet on board to participate.

Designed as a convenient resource for wide-ranging information specific to the Carnival Dream, the intranet portal details the ship’s numerous onboard activities, including entertainment options, daily events and youth programs. Carnival Dream’s extensive food and beverage offerings are showcased with sample menus, hours of operation and more. A filtering application is available to assist guests in planning their day.

The portal also includes weather updates for that day and the next port of call; the latest news and sports scores; biographies of key shipboard personnel; ship and cruise director announcements; fun, interactive polls; helpful three-dimensional ship maps, and a frequently asked questions section.

A year-long collaboration involving Carnival’s hotel operations, marketing, IT and guest experience departments, the Carnival Dream’s onboard social network and intranet portal are available on any guest computer or Wi-Fi enabled device free of charge.

During the Core Spring course you will be trained to become an expert in the Spring Framework. After the course you will receive a free voucher to take the SpringSource Certified Spring Professional exam to become officially certified in Spring. For full details, please visit the main training information page. Here is a summary of some of the upcoming Core Spring + Certification courses:

• United States & Canada
  • Arizona: Phoenix, 22 – 25 September ’09
    
  • California: San Francisco, 25 – 28 August ’09
    
  • Colorado: Colorado Springs, 18 – 21 August ’09
    
  • Illinois: Chicago, 01 – 04 September ’09
    
  • Indiana: Indianapolis, 28 – 31 July ’09
    
  • Maine: Portland, 15 – 18 September ’09
    
  • Maryland: Columbia, 25 – 28 August ’09
    
  • Massachusetts: Boston, 15 – 18 September ’09
    
  • Minnesota: Minneapolis, 04 – 07 August ’09
    
  • New York: New York, 11 – 14 August ’09
    
  • North Carolina: Charlotte, 28 – 31 July ’09
    
  • Ontario (CA): Ottawa, 18 – 21 August ’09
    
  • Ontario (CA): Toronto, 15 – 18 September ’09
    
  • Pennsylvania: Philadelphia, 29 September – 02 October ’09
    
  • Texas: Austin, 04 – 07 August ’09
    
  • Virginia: Arlington, 11 – 14 August ’09
    
  • Washington: Seattle, 22 – 25 September ’09
    

They also have a schedule for Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia & Australia.

Challenging Microsoft‘s grip on PCs, Internet search giant Google said late Tuesday night that it intends create its own computer operating system.

Google (GOOG) said the OS is initially aimed at netbooks — small, cheap and incredibly popular sub-notebooks — and would be an “open source” project built with and by many developers.

FROM GOOGLE: Company statement on its plans

Google is currently meeting with hardware manufacturers to aprise them of its plans, and hopes to have it on computers by the second half of 2010.

Google has denied for years any interest in taking on Microsoft (MSFT) or Apple (AAPL) with its own operating system, but Tuesday took a new direction.

In a blog post on the official Google blog, Google positioned the new Chrome Operating System as the “natural extension” of Chrome, the Internet browser Google introduced to acclaim in 2008 and which now has 30 million users.

Sears Holdings Corp. announced today that it is the first major retailer to launch the Open ID platform for Sears Communities, which will connect over 1 million monthly visitors via MySears and MyKmart sites to major social media.

The OpenID universal login standard enables visitors to consolidate their Internet identity by providing them a single login for all of their online interactions. This is the first step toward enabling customers to log in to Sears communities using their social IDs rather than set up new accounts. This covers the most popular, familiar web sites such as Google, Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo! and Twitter.

Through this new innovation, users in the Sears and Kmart communities can use the ID and password they already have to write product reviews and can share information on products, services and solutions. Future updates planned with the OpenID platform will allow users in the communities to share their posts and product reviews with friends easily via Facebook.

“We’re constantly looking for ways to stay innovative in our online initiatives by identifying and implementing technologies that help our users navigate our communities with ease,” says Rob Harles, Sears’ vice president of community. “Our adoption of the OpenID technology helps simplify our customers’ online experience and ultimately helps us meet our goal of ensuring our customers have the most efficient shopping experience possible.”

MySears and MyKmart community sites are online destinations that give consumers a variety of ways to share in-depth information about products, helping make their purchase decisions easier. Visitors to MySears and MyKmart have the opportunity to write product reviews, post comments on the reviews of others, participate in discussion boards and post ideas for the community to vote on. Customers also have access to special offers and coupons in return for their participation in the community.

To celebrate the availability of the Spring Certification Training in six new locations, SpringSource launched another once in a lifetime opportunity.

For every person that registers for a Spring Certification Training in one of the six new locations before July 01, 2009 you get the second person for free!

During this course you will learn to:

• Work with the Spring Inversion of Control (IoC) Container
• Effectively use JDBC and Hibernate for data access
• Use JUnit, Spring, stubs and mocking frameworks to effectively implement automated unit and integration tests
• Take advantage of Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) to keep code clean and maintainable
• Use Spring Security to secure web and standalone applications
• Manage live applications with ease using Spring’s support for Java
• Management Extensions (JMX)
• Become a SpringSource Certified Spring Professional
• And much more

This special is offered in the following cities, click on the links below to learn more!

August 11 – 14: Budapest, Hungary
August 11 – 14: São Paulo, Brazil
August 11 – 14: Tel Aviv, Israel
August 18 – 21: Athens, Greece
August 18 – 21: Hong Kong, Hong Kong
August 25 – 28: Buenos Aires, Argentina