Erik has his finger on the pulse of the Java community. This new feature is his take on what is hot, and what the community is buzzing about.

• Fire up your aggregators, Sun finally offers syndicated news feeds. Inquiring minds wonder if weblogs will be next?
• Matt hands out sweet Java treats.
• Arjun is compiling a list of free Java books.
• Java 1.5 stirs the pot for Joe and Daniel.
• Cedric and Cameron desperately try to make beautiful code.
• Cameron also gives us his Top Ten reasons to use .NET and Java. Carlos doesn't quite agree.
• These old Urban performance legends are the talk of the town.
• Diego lets the cat out of the bag and the community meows back.
• Michael reviews J2ME versus .NET: Reloaded.
• Notable software releases: FindBugs 0.5.4, JRat 0.4.1, jclassinfo 0.15, Joust 0.9, AspectJ for NetBeans 1.1rc2, Nanning 0.5, iXED 1.4.4, Jakarta POI 2.0-pre1.

Erik C. Thauvin is director of technology at Imacination Software, where he has spent the better part of last year creating and developing the jTalk E-Business Platform. He has close to 20 years of professional experience in hardware and software development, and maintains a lively Java blog.