In this week's KDE Commit-Digest:

• Network Management now uses QtNetworkManager to activate connections
• Non-QML TabBox removed in kde-workspace
• Fix of high cpu usage in Kwin fade effect
• Widget text color change possible in Umbrello

Akademy—the annual world summit of the KDE Community—will take place from 30 June to 6 July in Tallinn, Estonia. This 10th edition of the KDE community conference will celebrate 15 years of KDE!

Registration for the conference is now open, and the Call for Papers has been published.

ownCloud allows full control of cloud data storage. Version 3 of this open source File, Sync & Share Project has just been announced. Now users can do more than ever with their own private file-sharing cloud. In addition, its open, modular structure makes ownCloud the only cloud technology to offer several important and useful functions. Visit ownCloud for the full announcement and download instructions.

The KDE Telepathy team has made the first beta release of the new KDE Instant Messaging suite. This 0.3 release coincides with the release of KDE Workspaces, Applications and Platform 4.8.

KDE Telepathy (click for larger)

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest:

• Aurorae goes QML, ClientGroup becomes scriptable in KDE base
• Calligra sees work on footnotes, all interactive painting tools are threading-friendly; Kexi introduces Simple User Feedback Agent
• Rekonq adds about:tabs, an easy method to manage rekonq tabs

The latest set of KDE releases has been announced. It includes major updates to Plasma Workspaces, Applications, and the Development Platform. Version 4.8 provides many new features, as well as improved stability and performance. Check out the highlights below and read the full announcement.

Dolphin gets a new display engine (click for larger)

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest:

• Work on inter-file search in Lokalize
• New weather services: geonames and favorite weather station
• Google Code-in work on Marble; plugins integrated
• MLT clip analysis and freesound.org integration in Kdenlive

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest:

• Multiple changes in scripting in KWin: properties, interactive console to run scripts, import of a KCM
• Start of generic clip job framework implementation for Kdenlive
• In Calligra, updates of MSOffice 2000/2003 and 2007 format support, multiple fixes

A few months ago, the British journal Sociology published an article titled "Challenging Code: A Sociological Reading of the KDE Free Software Project". Eager to find out what a 'sociological reading' of KDE entails, Dot editor Oriol Mirosa rushed to contact the article's author, sociologist Brian Alleyne, who graciously and patiently agreed to be the subject of an interview. Read on to learn more about Brian, sociology, and the significance of KDE for the social sciences:

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest:

• In Calligra, extended undo/redo functionality, updated Excel 2000/2003 support, optimization of formula parsing and numerous bugfixes
• Kmix now shows MPRIS2 streams
• More useful capacity bar when hovering collection in Amarok