One of the interesting announcements to come out of Devoxx '09 this year is the decision to include closures in JDK 7. The decision whether to include them or not has been debated for ages and just when it seemed that they weren't going to be, now they are. If you've missed the whole closure debate there's an excellent article on JavaWorld - Understanding the closures debate (although exactly how closures will be implemented is still not certain).

The announcement also coincided with the news that the release of JDK 7 has been put back to September 2010 to allow some extra time to complete a few additional features like closures.

Devoxx '09, the Java community conference being held in Antwerp, was in full swing this week. I've just been trawling around to pick up some links to what's being going on:

• Geertjan Wielenga has posts on day 1 and day 2.
• Erik Jan de Wit also shares his experiences of day 1, day 2 and day 3.

There's an mp3 available of a Q&A session that James Gosling did with the Java User Groups.

And, Joe Darcy has posted the slides from his Project Coin talk. They give a bit of an idea about the thinking behind the language changes.

I've just been playing with Project MaiTai, a new graphics tool built using JavaFX v1.2.1. It lets you create interactive graphics by using building blocks that can be images, music, streams from Flickr or Twitter, RSS feeds, input from a mouse or keyboard, effects (e.g., blur, reflection, etc..) and more. Each block has different options allowing you to customize the effect it has on the graphics being created. Finally, the finished output can be exported as a movie file or a JavaFX application.

It's a very nifty tool that's quite fun to muckaround with. It's still being developed but if you want to have a go, just click on the beta link under Downloads on the right hand side of the Project MaiTai website.

There's more chat about the Java Store in the latest episode of the Deep Dive series. Ed Ort talks to Bernard Traversat, Director of Engineering for the Java Store in Deep Dive: Java Warehouse and Java Store. The video is in three parts as Bernard gives an overview of the Java Warehouse and Java Store, shows how to submit an application to the Java Warehouse and looks at the Java Store front end.

If you're a developer who wants to tap into a potential market for your Java applications the video is worth a look to see how the Java Store and Java Warehouse can help you. The Java Store is expected to open to U.S. market shortly and expand to other countries in 2010.