SUN'S "JINI": A MAGICIAN THAT MAKES PC GEAR "NETWORK CITIZENS"?

Anyone who has ever tried to add a disk drive or even a modem to a personal computer knows it's no easy task. Between making sure the equipment is the right kind for the PC and downloading and installing new software "drivers" to make it work, the task can quickly turn into a nightmare that even the new "Plug-and-Play" PCs haven't completely solved.

Try adding new devices to a big corporate network, and the problems multiply geometrically. That's where Bill Joy comes in. Cofounder of Sun Microsystems Inc. and vice-president for research, Joy wants to put an end to all that complexity. On July 20, Joy -- who heads a Sun skunkworks operation in Aspen, Colo.-- will unveil what he thinks is the answer: a new bit of computer code that works with Sun's Java software to inject smarts into any digital device, from disk drives and digital cameras to consumer products such as cellular phones and loudspeakers.

Not just any smarts, mind you: The software, code-named Jini (to sound like genie), essentially turns any device into what Joy terms a "network citizen." Once plugged into a network that runs Java, the device "announces" itself and tells the network what services it can provide -- say, 4 megabytes of storage for a disk drive or the ability to send color images for a digital camera. Then, any other device hooked up to the network, such as a PC or cellular phone, can tap those services from a simple Web browser menu by using Java as the common communications medium. The most basic piece of the software is only 25,000 bytes, which is small enough to embed in a very low-cost chip inside a device.

Here's how it might work: You walk into a corporate meeting room with your laptop, plug it into the network, and corral a printer on that network to print out a document. Or you could use a wireless PalmPilot handheld computer to tap into a digital camera on a network and tell it to turn to the left to focus on a particular person in the room. Or a cell phone could automatically let the mobile service company know that it has a color screen and keyboard, so it can receive E-mail. Or when you rent a car, your cell phone could tap into the car's speaker system for hands-free operation.

The beauty of the Jini software, says Joy, is that it allows networks to be built ad hoc, with little administrative oversight -- or even a screwdriver, for that matter. He calls it "composable computing."

"We've been fishing around for a system that puts itself together," says Joy, who has been working on Jini with project director Mike Clary and others in Aspen since April, 1997. With Jini, he says, "the system becomes much more organic, more fluid."

Such ease of installation and use will be especially important, he says, as consumer devices go digital. Consumers will need to connect them to other services on a network such as the Internet -- and do it as easily as changing channels on a television. "There's a bunch of new devices coming on the market that will require a much simpler way to tie them together," he says.

The Jini software won't be ready for incorporating into devices until October, and it's likely to undergo several months of debugging and other changes. Moreover, it will take months or even years beyond that for the software to find its way into a lot of devices and onto networks. Sun plans to make it available for download much like Netscape Communications did with its browser.

But while it may take some time for the software to catch on, already 30 companies are already trying an early version -- including Canon, cell-phone maker Ericsson, Toshiba, and disk-drive maker Quantum, which plans to build Jini devices that will make its products more flexible. A PC user could download a Java program into a disk drive to search for a deleted file. Because Jini makes any device able to communicate with any other, "this is almost a strategic inflection point in the industry," says Paul Borrill, vice-president and chief architect at Quantum.

Where does Sun archrival Microsoft Corp. fit in? Borrill, for one, thinks Jini will work with any devices and software, including Microsoft's. But Joy clearly relishes designing software that counters Microsoft's Windows operating software, which he views as way too complex. "It's a square peg in a round hole," he says of Windows. "There's gotta be a simpler way to deal with our computing environment."

By Rob Hof in San Mateo, Calif.

EDITED BY DOUGLAS HARBRECHT