Editor's note: News.com's Dan Farber reported Young's keynote speech and a follow-up Q&A live from JavaOne.

SAN FRANCISCO--At JavaOne here, Neil Young showed off his multimedia project that chronicles his music career and uses Java to do so.

Young said he tried to do the project on DVD, but users couldn't watch the high-resolution video and listen to the music at the same time. With Java and Blu-ray, the content can be updated and offer the best viewing and listening experience, as well as great navigation and design. "Storage is the only … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Following a flurry of T-shirts catapulted by Java creator James Gosling and a hot dance troop performance, 75 hours of JavaOne got under way here this week. Sun Microsystems' software chief, Rich Green, took the stage to talk about consumers, people he sees as driving change.

"Information is crossing the moat, escaping the castle," he said. "The private information network is gone." Enterprises have to recognize that the enterprise moat barriers are coming down, he added, with consumers driving innovation.

As part of Sun's effort to enable consumers to innovate, Green introduced JavaFX, a rich Internet application environment … Read more

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang talked to a few press outlets Monday, opening the door to further negotiations if Microsoft is willing to show him the money, or what he considers the appropriate price.

Microsoft's final bid was $33 and Yahoo held out for $37, or something close to that number, but Ballmer decided on Saturday not to continue the courtship. With Yahoo flaunting its possible ad serving deal with Google and holding out for an 80 percent premium over the January 31 closing stock price, Yang appeared to overplay his hand.

According to Reuters, Yang said it was Microsoft … Read more

SAP CEO Henning Kagermann has some advice for how Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer should spend $45 to $50 billion.

"I'd encourage him to spend it on Yahoo. For Microsoft, the challenges are more on the side of the consumer space, not the enterprise space," said Kagermann.

While Ballmer walked away from Yahoo over the asking price and other issues, he might be back if Yahoo fails to show that it can gain momentum.

Kagermann was speaking at SAP's Sapphire conference in Orlando, Fla. ZDNet's Larry Dignan captured the action. Kagermann speculated that Microsoft wouldn't … Read more

At SAP's Sapphire conference this week in Orlando, Fla., a question posed by one of my colleagues concerns the status of Business ByDesign, an on-demand suite of applications that has been in development for about five years.

Last week, it was announced that the product would take 12 to 18 months longer than the original target of 2010 to reach $1 billion in revenue and touch 10,000 customers in the mid-market globally.

ZDNet's Larry Dignan reports on a conversation with SAP co-CEO Leo Apotheker, who explained that Business ByDesign was delayed because the company wasn't able … Read more

I saw Iron Man (cool Web site) on Sunday, joining the hordes who contributed to the $100 million dollar plus opening of the film. The movie was a blast so to speak, and Robert Downey Jr. was outstanding in the lead role. It has plenty of digital special effects and great production design, especially the futuristic computer usage scenarios.

Minority Report has some interesting computer usage scenarios, but Iron Man is far more sophisticated. It's difficult to describe the digital systems, but they are artificially intelligent (pass the Turing Test), and allow Iron Man, aka Tony Stark, to design, … Read more

In a memo to Yahoo employees, co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang asked his troops to redouble their efforts and to focus on executing what he called the most important transition in the company's history. It was the expected post-game motivational speech after declining to take Microsoft $33 per share offer.

On Monday Yang, will face some irate investors and employees. The stock is expected to head south at the market open. He will need to provide more evidence than slideware about doubling operating cash flow in three years that Yahoo has a plan to grow revenue and profits ahead … Read more

My friend Marc Canter has written a series of blog posts outlining the issues, constructs, technologies, and standards required to build out an "open mesh," as he put it. It's a kind of unified field theory for the Web.

Canter has been an evangelist for a Web without walled gardens. He also has a financial stake in the open mesh. He runs a company called Broadband Mechanics that has developed a white label social network and Web site creation service that depends on open standards.

The open mesh is not Microsoft's Live Mesh. The open mesh … Read more

In a special edition of the Gillmor Gang, Steve Gillmor, Mike Arrington, Doc Searls, Dana Gardner, Robert Anderson, Robert Scoble and I discuss Microsoft's decision to walk away from its bid to acquire Yahoo.

The consensus: Google is a big winner, Microsoft is not dead, and lives to bid another day, and Yahoo better be able to execute with precision on its strategy or it faces difficult times and a less lucrative result for shareholders.

Listen to the show