IBM's Andy Piper gives an update on themes, announcements, and Ray Kurzweil's talk at IMPACT 2010 in Las Vegas. Follow Andy on Twitter @andypiper, or through his blog.

This week on developerWorks, plus a chat with Valerie Skinner who blogs

as Yin Meets Yang and in the group blog My developerWorks Enthusiasts.

Trent Gray-Donald, IBM Java 7 technical lead, comments on the state of

Java as a platform and a language, Oracle ownership of Sun, IBM Java 7, Open JDK and

Apache Harmony, and what cloud computing means for Java developers. Also, check out

theJava Platform Roundtable, Spring 2010 and Java Technology, IBM

style.

Chris Barger is social media lead for General Motors Corporation. I

caught up with him at the SXSWi 2010 Chevy Volt Recharge Lounge for a chat about

encouraging change in communication strategy at GM and the part social media has

played.

This week on developersWorks plus developer/author/speaker Scott Davis

talks about exploring Web sites, mobile applications, open data, and APIs for public

transportation.

This week on developerworks, plus an interview with U.S. Air Force

Captain Nathan Broshear who talks about how the USAF is using social media in

crisis/relief situations and for communicating soldiers' stories to the media.

Joel Bush co-founded Amplifier.com to help web companies monetize and

expand their brands. Clients include The Onion and Despair Inc., and Bush and

company go about their business with a unselfed zest that might seem odd to many in

today's "brand-yourself-24/7" web world. But it's the nature of their business and

part of what makes them so effective. I caught up with Joel at SXSW and we spoke

about his business, the great even that is SXSWi, and other things on his always

active and observant mind.

TWOdW for the week of March 22. David Meerman Scott talks about the

merging of social networking, marketing, and public relations, why ROI is inadequate

to measure its value, and other things he's excited about. dW newsletter editor John

Swanson talks about dW Forums.

Geoffrey McCaleb, Nsyght's Mad Scientist, talks about beginning with a

desire to solve a problem of search relevancy and ending up with a new brand and

approach to social network aggregation. Todd Watson joins.

Patrick Meier of Ushahidi.com talks about their free and open source

solution, first created for mapping incidents of violence during the 2007 Kenyan

elections and now being used in Haiti and Chile to assist with rescue and relief

efforts.