Am I the only person waiting for a Java based Blogging tool? With technologies like Cocoon and Xindice, how far away can it be? I may just have to jump into the fray myself if I don’t get one soon. Here’s how I see it, feel free to correct me if I’m off base here.


Bloggers love things that are free, hell all people love that 4 letter word F R E E. If you look at applications like Blogger and LiveJournal, the proliferation of their use and their sudden rise into the mainstream are perfect examples of the “free is good” manifesto taking over blogging.


In steps the open source community, specifically the Java and XML open source community. They offer all of the tools needed to create a killer blogging tool for, yes you guessed it, free. About all you’d need for this killer blogging tool would be Tomcat (server), Lucene (search), Velocity (template), Cocoon (publication framework), Jetspeed (portal), Xindice (storage), and a little SOAP (used to clean yourself) for good measure. The only thing I can’t seem to find for free is a comment/discussion framework. Anyone know of one? These guys already sold out.


With all of those frameworks and tools, and a few talented and determined webheads, I think you could create a tool to compete with the entrenched Perl blogging community. I’m talking about the likes of MovableType, Slash, and GreyMatter. Anyone up for the challenge? If so, drop me a line.