One of the few utility programs that are used every day on mobile devices is a wireless networking tool, but somehow this is one of the last applications to appear for KDE 4. With the autumn 2009 crop of Linux distributions, a usable client for the widely used NetworkManager system finally makes its debut.

The Amarok project has joined the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC). This move allows donors to give tax-deductible donations in the US, and it increases transparency in the spending of Amarok's funds. At the same time, we will not loosen our ties with the KDE project. Amarok is, and will always stay, a fully committed project under the KDE umbrella. Read on for more!

KDevelop 4 in action

The KDevelop team is proud to announce the sixth beta of KDevelop4. There haven't been any major features started since beta 5 as this is mostly a bugfix release (demonstrated by the list of fixed bugs). This also marks the end of the KDE 4.2 support. With this release KDevelop4 requires KDE 4.3 and Qt 4.5 to fully supply the GUI we want to provide our users with. It is also the last release that we're doing on behalf of ourselves, all upcoming betas will be done together with KDE 4.4. We are aiming at releasing with KDE 4.4.0 as we think that KDevelop4 is ready feature-wise and really needs to get a first release out of the door.

KMyMoney 1.0

The KMyMoney development team is pleased to announce a major step forward for what has been described as "the BEST personal finance manager for FREE users". KMyMoney 1.0 has been released. With over 3 years of development, this new stable release has many new features and a refreshed user interface.

Looks like summer finally caught up with digiKam developers! This week the digest will be very short: ongoing work on refactoring color profiles code; libkdcraw updated to libraw-0.8.0-beta5 (support for RAW files bigger than 2GB); new features in Flickr export. A total of 10 bugs were closed (including several crashes) while 8 new ones were reported. Read the rest of the
digiKam digest here!

As usual, Mikolaj Machowski has compiled a commit digest of the work going on in Digikam on his blog. This excellent work deserves a more public spot, so from now you will find them linked on the dot. Those interested in the progress and new developments in the world of digital photography, be sure to click through to the digest!

Today the KPhotoAlbum team has launched a competition to create the coolest showcase video for the new KDE 4 version of KPhotoAlbum. Besides fame and glory participant also has the chance to win $100 for the coolest video.

Photographers in the Free world rejoice! On behalf of the Digikam developer team, Gilles Caullier has announced the first KDE 4 release of Digikam, the photo management application.

Digikam is a full-fledged tool that covers the whole digital photography workflow, from downloading the pictures off of your camera (and in the new version even capturing photos from inside digikam) to sorting, editing, rating and tagging (including geolocation and editing of raw photos in the new version) and of course also publishing your photos. Digikam now also allows for importing images from Social Media such as Facebook and SmugMug. Export plugins makes it easy to publish your photos to sites such as Picasa, FlickR, 23hq, Facebook and SmugMug. For the more traditional paper version of photos, there is the scan option that lets you import and manage all your old photos from Digikam as well.
Light Table allows you to compare pictures side by side and the powerful Image Editor lets you touch up your photos, correct colors, white balance and contrast and remove red eyes. It also offers more advanced features such as ICC profile-based color management and lens vignetting correction.

Linux.com covers Kraft, an administration software package for small and medium businesses (SMB), covering activities such as customer management, document workflow, material management, calculations for positions and templates for most of these. Linux.com concludes
"Kraft takes some of the drudgery out of tracking work offers and invoicing. If you are a KDE user, being able to use a single contact manager for issuing your invoices will cut down on your mail merging worries. But Kraft's handling of VAT/GST could be improved." We will have to add to that, that you do not need to be a "KDE user" already to use Kraft. As with all KDE applications, it runs just fine on other Free desktops too. The KDE e.V. uses craft for membership management, and gets first-hand support by Kraft's main developer, our very own Klaas Freitag.

Issue 13 of Amarok Insider, the official Amarok newsletter is out. It discusses the evolution of Amarok's interface, reveals the release plans, covers some of the biggest features of the upcoming version 2.0, and much more. Download links for Windows and OS X versions of the Amarok 2.0 beta are included.