Performance and debugging tools getting better... also:
Spotlight: BTrace project
Java Today: Atmosphere project, Scene Graph intro for JavaFX, and scaling to multi-core
Weblogs: IcedTea desktop implications, using Felix shell with GlassFish, and a very careful reading of the JSF docs
Forum Posts: JXLayer and touch panels, NetBeans font handling in forms, and server-side detection of an applet's startup