Smart appliances, though expensive niche products at first, will be a fertile field for software such as Jini, IDC analyst Bruce Stephen predicted. "White goods" manufacturers Sunbeam, Maytag, Whirlpool, Electrolux, Merloni, Electrodomestici, General Electric and Sharp all are putting electronic brains into their appliances, he said.

Jini devices are a particularly good idea in Europe, where environmental regulations and limited electricity supplies mean a refrigerator might want to check with the washing machine to make sure switching on won't blow a circuit breaker, according to PersonalGenie, a company that plans to offer services that will take advantage of such features.

"Yes, your refrigerator will talk to your coffee maker will talk to your electric blanket will talk to your oven," Stephen said. "Virtually everyone who is a name in the white goods industry is getting behind this."

Sun charges manufacturers 10 cents per Jini device but expects the real profit to come from sales of back-end computers that will be needed to power the Internet services people use from their cell phones, TVs or cars. For those that want to use Jini software modules rather than sell Jini gadgets, Sun instead charges a fee of about $250,000 a year.

MediaGate intends to use Jini in its upcoming Internet universal messaging server that will let people use a single account to access phones, mobile phones, fax machines or pagers. MirrorWorlds is using Jini for its "LifeStore" hard disks that can be attached to any sort of gadget and store any sort of file. ProSyst is developing software to let Jini-outfitted medical monitors automatically summon a doctor when necessary.

Epson, Xerox, Kodak and "most major printer manufacturers" are working on a standard interface for Jini printers, Sun said. Japanese cell phone giant NTT Docomo will put Jini on its i-Mode cellular phones. And Gateway will ship Jini and other Sun software to Sun's customers who need Windows PCs.

Perhaps the most significant ally is Palm Computing, which is investigating using Jini on its popular handheld devices. "We like the idea. The possibilities are pretty cool," said Peter Claassen, Palm's business development manager. "We announced last year we were part of the Jini Community."

Using a Jini-powered Palm Pilot, a person could print up a list of contacts directly to a Jini printer without going through a PC or knowing what type of printer it is. A person also could download some photos from a friend's Jini digital camera, take them home, then store them on a Jini hard disk.

In addition to the 25,000 individuals who have downloaded Jini software under Sun's free evaluation license, dozens of companies have signed commercial licenses in the past six months, said Curtis Sasaki, director of Sun's consumer and embedded technologies group.

Many industry analysts say these are the reasons that Sun had no choice but to trumpet Jini early, even though it ran the risk that it wouldn't catch on like wildfire. "Sun had to get on the road maps of all these technology companies early, early on," IDC's Hause said.