theKompany.com is pleased to announce the first public beta of Kivio, our diagramming and flowcharting tool for Linux/KDE.

Kivio is the first and most complete diagramming tool for KDE. Kivio has been integrated into KOffice through the use of KParts. This technology preview release is the first public beta of Kivio. There is a core set of functionality and features to start getting feedback from the Linux/KDE community.

Luis Digital wrote us about his various presentations on the KDE2 betas directed at the Hispanic community, but with screenshots everyone can enjoy. In a similar vein, MachineOfTheMonth is presenting a review of Kandidat (warning: popup ads).

I'm pleased to announce that KDE received the
Linux Journal Readers' Choice award for
Favorite Desktop Environment at the Atlanta Linux Showcase. You
can take a look at the award poster. Congratulations everyone!

Ivan E Moore has pulled the plug on the KDE Linux Packaging Project. On his page he explains the reasons, citing a lack of time and the fact that he received little help from the community, along with "one person".

This week's installment of The People Behind KDE, interviews David Faure of Konqueror fame. David has done some amazing programming for KDE and continues to impress. What is David's current role in KDE?

Sun Microsystems, probably best known at the KDE end of the spectrum for their influential paper on local vs distributed computing, recently open-sourced StarOffice, making it freely available to KDE as well as other projects. What impact will this have on KDE and KOffice?

LinuxOnline is currently featuring an interesting interview with Shawn Gordon of theKompany.com.

Cristian Tibirna writes, "David Faure and I will be present in the name of KDE at the LinuxExpo in
Toronto from 30 October to 1 November 2000. [...] If you will be in the Toronto area in this period and you will be available
for helping us present KDE in the booth kindly lended to us by the organizers

The latest edition of LWN has a nice editorial on PR in free software projects. Worth a read. "An often-heard sentiment among KDE developers is that they may have a better desktop, but that the project has taken a number of hits on the public relations front.

Matthias Hoelzer-Kluepfel recently announced Java bindings for DCOP. In other words, Java can now communicate with and control KDE2 applications. A welcome addition to the existing C bindings for DCOP, originally used by the long gone kmapnotify.