Troy 

Over on his blog Sebastian Kügler talks about the status of Akonadi, how the migration of Kontact to Akonadi is going, and in general where the direction of development is leading. Read More

The KDE web team is pleased to announce a major redesign of the KDE.org frontpage and buzz.kde.org, just in time for the pending release of our updated Workspace, Application and Development Platform compilation. The redesign is the result of many hours of work by artists, coders, writers and testers. Keep reading to gain some insight into the people and processes behind the retooling. Read More

Last week, the KDE Community had their yearly Americas event, this year in sunny San Diego. Despite California not living up to its sunny reputation, the attendees certainly had a good time. The first three days featured talks about a variety of topics (day 1, day 2 and day 3), there were CMake and Qt development courses and of course several small meetings and work to be done. However there was more than sitting in the conference room at UCSD. We had a great time at Banana Bungalows on the beach, went out for a variety of food, had a few dragons and babies visit us and risked our lives getting to and from the university. Read on for some general impressions on the event, and for some motivation to attend Camp KDE 2011 next January, at a location still to be determined. Read More

The third day of talks at Camp KDE was somewhat shorter, due to the afternoon Cmake training provided by Marcus Hanwell of Kitware. However, in order to provide complete coverage of the talks for the readers of the dot, summaries of the third day's technical talks are provided within. Read More

Do you have a special story about how you or your organization has used KDE to break free from proprietary software? If so, enter the Camp KDE "Be Free" Contest and tell us your story! Read More

Over at Linux Journal, Dave Phillips takes a look at the video editor Kdenlive. This KDE 4 application allows users to download video from camcorders or capture screen recordings, edit audio and video tracks, and more. Phillips concludes: "There's a lot to like about Kdenlive, and I like it a lot. Its feature set is full enough to satisfy basic desktop video production needs, and its workflow is uncomplicated and easy to learn. However, it must be considered that I've reviewed a personal build from SVN sources." Read the full article. Read More

Every once in a while, the KDE community stumbles across a third party application that is well integrated into KDE, but has somehow managed to fly completely beneath the radar. One such application is called simon (small 's' intentional), a speech recognition program that integrates well with KDE and provides a means of interacting with KDE using voice recognition. Read More

Every few weeks Nuno Pinheiro and the KDE Oxygen Icons team are publishing a new usability survey online to get feedback from users on the look and feel of icons. In particular, the Oxygen team is looking for feedback from individuals that have had no exposure to KDE, so if you are at home or at work, poke your friends and family and have them complete the survey, or simply take the survey yourself. The current survey is on icons for KDevelop 4 which is a major rewrite of KDevelop for KDE 4. So if you have a moment, grab someone and complete the KDevelop Icons Survey now.

In 1996 when KDE was first announced, it had only a handful of developers and the project could manage the source code without using a revision control system. More and more developers have begun to contribute to KDE over the years, and while there has been some attrition, the total number of active developers working on KDE has been steadily growing. Read More

Every two weeks Nuno Pinheiro and the KDE Oxygen Icons team will be publishing a new usability survey online to get feedback from users on the look and feel of icons. In particular, the Oxygen team is looking for feedback from individuals that have had no exposure to KDE, so if you're at home or at work, poke your friends and family and have them complete the survey, or simply take the survey yourself. The current survey is on icons for the KDE 4 port of K3b which is currently underway. So if you have a moment, grab someone and complete the K3b Icons Survey now.

For those following the development of KOffice, one of the first reviews of KOffice 2.0 has appeared at the Tech Radar website. KOffice 2.0 is the platform release for the KOffice 2 series, and as such, is not yet appropriate for all users. From the article: "Free software is often developed with the mantra 'release early, release often'. This is a great idea, because new tools can be tested, trialled and critiqued as they're developed [...] Many of the elements in KOffice 2.0 show great promise and we look forward to testing the suite once more when it's ready." Read More