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Most people agree that the K3b CD burner is an application done right -- it looks good, is not overly complicated, and most of all "just works" -- the fact that Novell adopted it for Novell Linux Desktop is icing on the cake. Well, the Katalog CD Organizer, a possible cousin to K3b, is KDE integration done right. People may know of gtktalog and cdcat, both are fine applications; Katalog, however, is more of a plug-in for KDE. It works by right-clicking and cataloguing a directory or external media to a XML data file. There is a katalog ioslave for viewing katalog files as if they were native file structures. Delete, rename, and even the find dialog works on the files. This program is, in my opinion, a fine example of how a program can be integrated into, and built upon, KDE's strengths.

Members of the kdepim and OpenGroupware.org teams met at Magdeburg on the last weekend of October to implement OpenGroupware.org support in Kontact. The effort turned out to be a full success. After two days of ferocious hacking the team consisting of Till Adam and Cornelius Schumacher from KDE and Helge Heß and Marcus Müller from OpenGroupware.org had completed a first working implementation for accessing the OpenGroupware.org server through Kontact. This adds another Free Software system to the growing list of groupware servers supported by KDE. A special aspect of this implementation is that it is completely based on existing open standards like HTTP, WebDAV, iCalendar and vCard and could serve as a model for a standard access to groupware servers. The used protocol is documented as a draft RFC.

In this week's KDE CVS-Digest (experimental layout): KDevelop adds extension support. Kommander improves signal and slot editor. Kwallet is now asynchronous. JuK adds support for GStreamer 0.8. KPasswordDialog adds password strength meter.

In a very short time, the Inkscape project has developed into a flexible, solid, and user friendly vector drawing program. To what does the project owe its success? Bryce Harrington, one of the main developers behind Inkscape, reveals in this interview his thoughts on project management and keeping the focus on the big issues.

Again after a short time of absence we finally finished a new version of the "Application of the Month" series. This time we take look at the underadvertised addressbook application within KDE, KAddressBook which is currently maintained and developed by Tobias Koenig. We are proud that we can now also offer a French version of Application of the Month next to the usual languages we always offer: German, Dutch and English. Do you like these series? Do you think we should write more about cool KDE applications? Please, contact us if you want to help! UPDATE: Our friends from KDE-Hispano have made a translation to Spanish.

We have released Kexi 0.1 beta 5 (change log), the integrated environment for managing data. Kexi aims to become an open-source replacement for MS Access yet ubiquitously available on Linux/Unix, Windows, and soon, even MacOSX. Kexi has the potential to become a key application in the adoption of KDE, KOffice, Linux and free software in general, for individuals as well as companies and independent software vendors.

At this year's Linux World Expo & Conference Europe, taking place in Frankfurt, Germany, KDE's mail application KMail received the Linux New Media Award in the "Best Mail Client" category. The prize was awarded to "Kontact/KMail" to honor the groupware integration efforts done by the KMail developers. KMail maintainer Ingo Klöcker was the one to receive the award. The Linux New Media Awards are among the most significant international prizes for Linux- and Open Source products. The jury consisted of 100 Linux- and IT experts, among them Linux kernel hacker Alan Cox and Knoppix inventor Klaus Knopper.

LinuxReviews.org had an interview with Jaroslaw Staniek. Jaroslaw works on making KDE applications running on MS Windows without X11 and CygWin and also contributes to Kexi.

In this editorial published on osViews the author preaches integration as real opportunity for Linux to become a "killer application". As example for his argumentation he mentions KDE 3.3 and its new integration features.

In his bi-weekly column "KDE: From the Source" at O'Reilly's OSDir.com George Staikos talks in the current issue about KDE's fully networked desktop protocol handlers as well his favorite local ones. To quote George: "Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X have a long way to go to catch up with the robust, transparent functionality that KDE has provided since version 2.0."