Let's face it: we're engineers and we love numbers. This week, we have a particular fondness for 25, which is the number of issues that we've published so far. Yup, it's an important milestone, and we'd like to take a moment to thank you for your continued interest, hoping that you enjoyed reading our editorial as much as we enjoyed writing it.

And, after this brief ceremonial moment, let's get back to our main focus: delivering the freshest technical stories about the platform we love best.

JBoss Asylum - Forge Edition

Episode 23 of the JBoss Asylum has been released - featuring JBoss Forge, our own state-of-the art RAD tool. By listening to the podcast, you can learn more about it from Lincoln Baxter III, project lead, and Paul Bakker, JBoss Community member and tireless Forge contributor.

Impressions from Devoxx (and not just)

A couple of our JBoss colleagues have taken the time to write a bit about Devoxx and other events that they have spoken to on behalf of JBoss.

• Andrew's european grand tour: In his blog, Andrew Rubinger recounts his impressions from a month-long series of conferences in Europe. In the first part he is musing about about the fast pace of JBoss AS7 and Arquillian, recollects interesting discussions with JBoss team and community members, and a surprise encounter with Team Spring. That should be spoiler enough.
• Infinispan team at Devoxx: Sanne Grinovero writes about the Infinispan team participation at Devoxx, as well as the newest developments in Hibernate Search and Hibernate OGM. I'm personally enticed by the new integration layer offered by Hibernate OGM and its opportunities. If I'd be in Newcastle next week, I'd attend Sanne and Paul Robinson's JBUG talk on the 13th of December. But some of you may be there, so don't miss it!

More about Seam

Following last week's announcement on the future of Seam and the formation of the Apache DeltaSpike project, the Seam team has worked relentlessly on finalizing Seam 3.1, and the first release candidate is out. You can read more in Shane Bryzak's announcement. Jason Porter delivers some tips concerning the latest fixes.

In what concerns Seam 2 users, Marek Novotny has provided more details on the roadmap of Seam 2.3, which will allow Seam 2 users to fully enjoy the benefits of JSF2 and JBoss AS7.

JUDCon India agenda published

The agenda for JUDCon India (Bangalore, 24-25 January 2012) has been finalized, and can be found here - two days packed of presentations on state-of-the art technology.

Be at the JBoss World, and let your voice be heard!

We'd like to remind you that the Call For Papers for JBoss World 2012 is still open, and the deadline is next week (December 16). So, if you have something interesting to say, choose one of the tracks, and submit a talk!

Packt would like to know what you want to read about

Packt Publishing has an online survey, where they essentially want to make sure they are making the right offers to all JBoss users and are providing what they need and want.  Check some details that  Len DiMaggio provides here. Maybe it's time to show an interest in that particular book that you've been waiting for.

New releases

We also had a slew of new releases coming out:

• Switchyard 0.3
• Snowdrop 2.0.1.Final
• Richfaces 4.1.0.CR2
• Hibernate 4.0.0.CR7
• Torquebox 2.0.0.beta1
• Errai 1.3.2

This is all for this week. We wish you good luck with holiday preparations - which for many of us may begin with releasing all that stuff before that deadline in December. Come back next week for more news.