Being _faster_ is a rare one to hear about a Java app :) Actually, the implementation is slightly different.
In Emplode, I believe they have a background thread that updates the soup view periodically (or the thread is triggered when an update occurs).
In JEmplode, I fire change events (add, update, delete) that soup views catch and respond to appropriately (i.e. if the Artist soup sees that a node was modified, it updates the artist of the corresponding soup entry).
Theirs is probably more "friendly" resource-wise for large updates, but ours will typically be more responsive for small updates.
Is that more information than you wanted :)
Mike