We might not understand much of the jargon and intricacies of the high-technology world, but we know a bright, up-and-coming local product when we see one. Gilbert Maerina of Waimea, recently promoted to junior software engineer at Digital Systems Resources,
We might not understand much of the jargon and intricacies of the high-technology world, but we know a bright, up-and-coming local product when we see one.
Gilbert Maerina of Waimea, recently promoted to junior software engineer at Digital Systems Resources, Inc., is two school years away from his degree in computer sciences, but is already well-established in cyberspace.
He is active in the Sun Microsystems’ Project JXTA (www.jxta.org) that is working to allow holders of any connected device on a network (cell phones to wireless handheld devices to personal computers to servers) to talk to other holders of such devices, across firewalls and across continents.
The site has nearly 11,000 members.
JXTA is computer talk for juxtapose, as in side by side, as in allowing holders of various computerized technologies to easily communicate with one another.
Maerina is featured on the Project JXTA Web site, as a featured developer, collaborator, or committer, and devotes 20 hours a week to the project. He has been a member of the Project JXTA community since March of this year.
He is a committer on the Bench project, and a contributor to Search, JXTA-RMI, and jxtacast. His Project JXTA work includes actively engaging in testing the scalability, robustness and performance of the technology.
Included in his work posted on the Web site are graphs showing average time required to connect to the JXTA Web site, in milliseconds (average time around 45 seconds).
Maerina is attending the University of Hawaii at Hilo on the Big Island, and is expecting to graduate in the spring of 2004.
He has interned at the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility at Barking Sands, and was interning as a software developer for a year with Digital Systems Resources’ (DSR) Hawai’i office in the West Kauai Technology & Visitors Center until his change of status to junior software engineer in July of this year.
His vision is that JXTA will be used to create large, ad-hoc, connected communities. He also envisions using JXTA to create public and private distributed computing communities, and JXTA SuperProcessing.
You can reach Gilbert at gmaerina@dsrnet.com, or on the Project JXTA discuss mailing list.
The Project JXTA goal is to explore a vision of distributed network computing, using peer-to-peer topology, and to develop basic building blocks and services that would enable innovative applications for peer groups.