The Rise Of Mashups

As much as I hate the over-over-over-engineered java Portlet specification JSR-168 and JSR-268, as much as I  felt safe with the Mashup concept. Though in its early stages, I believe mashups will eventually replace Portals and Portlets forever.

To follow up on Java mashup news, keep a close eye on the following:
http://www.jackbe.com/enterprise-mashup/mashups-and-java/

An excellent article explaining custom tags in JSP2

This is an excellent article explaining custom tags in JSP2:
http://www.vsj.co.uk/java/display.asp?id=408

The custom tag development has been simplified and the complicated java API is no longer needed to develop a custom tag. A *.tag file is created instead.

JSP custom tags are an advantage in the JSP language that does not exist in other web technologies I'm aware of (ie. PHP).