"The cell phone is tomorrow's desktop," James Gosling told an interviewer yesterday, as he - and Sun Microsystems - completed final preparations for this year's historic JavaOne Conference. Historic, because it will be the first ever JavaOne in history at which the CEO has not been called Scott McNealy.

But this will be not just the JavaOne of McNealy's successor, Jonathan Schwartz. It will be the JavaOne of Java EE 5, which was was unveiled last week and features ease of use improvements and Web services programming enhancements. And it will be the JavaOne of Java on the cell phone.

Gosling, then, is setting the tone for the entire conference when he draws attention to the importance of the cell phone as the new platform for interaction with the network.

There is an entire track devoted to Java ME, with 26 separate sessions on everything from using the NetBeans Software Mobility Pack to develop JSR 226 applications to future directions in Java Card platform evolution.

SYS-CON.TV will be in attendance at JavaOne this year, as ever. As will many of the editors who bring you Java Developer's Journal each month, such as Yakov Fain who has been selected as one of this year's "Java Champions," Joe Winchester who for the second year running has been invited to be a member of the star-studded Desktop Panel," Michael Yuan, Rick Hightower and Bill Dudney.