Pronounced "
gee-nee." A Java-based distributed computing environment originally from Sun in which devices plugged into the network automatically offer their services. Jini creates a "network dialtone" allowing, for example, a laptop to be plugged in and immediately use printers and other resources. It turns "peripherals into services," so that when a disk drive is plugged in, it becomes a storage service rather than just a drive. Jini was taken over by Apache and became the Apache River project. See
JavaSpaces and
zero configuration.