No, I'm not talking about any kung-fu variant from Indonesia. I'm talking about JavaBlackBelt. In their own words:
JavaBlackBelt is a community for Java and related technologies certifications.
It's basically an alternative to Sun's official certifications. And although you won't get the same recognition (not even close), JavaBlackBelt's exams cover a lot more ground than Sun's. You don't get evaluated only for your knowledge of official JDK libraries, but also from your knowledge of many popular technologies that a Java developer might find: Struts, Spring, XML, JDBC, Ant...just to name a few.
Also, the whole certification path is fun and very well thought. When you first register, you receive a white belt and from that you have to pass exams in order to receive the other belts, all the way to the black belt. To take an exam you also have to pay, but in contribution points, not money :) Contribution points are what holds JavaBlackBelt as a community. You receive contribution points by creating questions to a certain exam (it will be voted and filtered before getting into the real exam) or by evaluating other people's questions. Then, you can use your contributions points to take exams and also to participate in auctions. Auctions allow you to spend your contribution points in prizes (normally books or t-shirts).
For now, I have a yellow belt, but I made this post because I just successfully took the JDBC exam and I'm just one exam away from my orange belt. Wheeeeeh...err, I mean: YEAAHHH (with strong manly voice).
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