The taxi's meter prints her out a receipt. When she steps inside, the organizer checks in with a wireless network that exists solely inside the airport. It requests information about whether her plane is on time, and perhaps announces to reservation computers that she has reached the airport. Likewise, the lights and electric range of her home are controllable from the organizer. Modems, scanners and new hard drives connect instantly to her family's PC, without elaborate set-up.
Data flows to and from the house with similar ease.
As it did with the related Java programming technology, Sun is developing Jini as a community effort. There is no central control, no monopolist pulling the strings,'' said Bill Joy, the Sun technologist who is Jini's driving force. That, of course, is a dig at Microsoft, whose Windows software runs on roughly 90 percent of the world's PCs. Microsoft has an initiative called Universal Plug and Play, an enhancement on technology that has made it simpler to connect printers, hard drives and other devices to Windows PCs. The main goal is to enable consumer networking to be easier,'' said Phil Holden, a Microsoft group product manager.