The NetBeans website has launched a new Plugin Portal to make it easier to find and download NetBeans plugins. Members of the NetBeans Community (free to join) have the ability to rank and comment on NetBeans plugins as well as publish their own to the website.

Any NetBeans plugin submitted must meet the Plugin Portal's requirements. The plugin then needs to be verified by a test team who decide if the plugin can appear on the portal. More information of the process can be found in the publishing plugin FAQ.

NetBeans 7.0 has been released and is available to download from the NetBeans website. The list of improvements in NetBeans 7.0 can be found in the New and NoteWorthy page and the NetBeans 7.0 Release Notes. The most notable being the support of the upcoming JDK 7.0 Project Coin small language changes.

If you're interested the results and comments for the NetBeans 7.0 Release Candidate(s) acceptance survey are online.

Finally, in case you missed it, over on the Oracle Media Network you can watch the recent NetBeans 7.0 Techcast Live with, NetBeans Engineering Manager, John Jullion-Ceccarelli.

Ed Burns is running a competition to design a logo for JavaServer Faces. Follow the link for full details but basically he's looking for something to represent JSF for use on presentations, websites, etc..

The prize is a copy of his Secrets of the Rockstar Programmers book and the knowledge that every time you see the new JSF logo you can say "I did that!" to anyone within earshot (probably best saved for Java conferences..).  

Submission of the logo is to a JIRA issue so you'll need a Java.net login (free to create) and you have until 12.00pm, April 29th 2011 (EDT).

Ed Burns is the spec lead for JSF and co-author of JavaServer Faces 2.0.

This month the JCP is building up to a Special Election to fill the four open seats on the JCP Executive Committee. The Chair of the JCP, Patrick Curran explains the process on his blog.

Two nominations have been made by Oracle (Bruno Souza representing the Brazilian JUG SouJava and John Weir representing Goldman Sachs) and the nomination process for the other two seats is open until April 25th 2011.

The election ballet is held between April 26th and May 9th 2011.

If you're interested in what's going on with the JCP there's a few recent interviews with Patrick Curran you can look at: TechCast: Inside the Java Community Process, A Conversation with JCP Chair Patrick Curran, or InfoQ's Role of the JCP.