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The second beta of the 4.11 releases of Plasma Workspaces, Applications and Platform is available. The beta 2 release announcement has highlights, links to release details and download instructions. The development focus is on bug fixing, polishing and general stabilization.

This Akademy keynote talk is based on Jolla and their Sailfish OS. It will cover project history, software architecture and collaboration between Jolla and various open source projects such as Qt, Mer, and Nemo Mobile. It will address the user interface concepts used in Sailfish OS and highlight the benefits of using Qt Quick to build the user experience in Sailfish OS.

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest:

• Kickoff shows new applications for 3 days in a separate submenu "Recently Installed"
• KWin adds a helper effect for KScreen integration
• Skrooge allows changing operation date through "Search & Process"
• In Amarok, TrackLoader and PlaylistController support for treating remote playlists as streams, OpenGL analyzers appear, analyzers are configurable now
• Network Management allows configuring band/channel for ad hoc wifi mode
• KDE Telepathy supports persistent chats in the plasmoid
• Bug fixes in Umbrello, Dolphin, KMail.

Read the rest of the Digest here.

Akademy is a non-commercial event, free of charge for all who want to attend. Generous sponsor support helps make Akademy possible. Most of the Akademy budget goes towards travel support for KDE community members from all over the world, contributors who would not be able to attend the conference otherwise. The wide diversity of attendees is essential to the success of the annual in-person Akademy conference. Many thanks to Akademy sponsors!

Are you attending Akademy 2013 in Bilbao? Do you want to get something special out of your Akademy experience?

Be a volunteer. The Akademy Team needs motivated people who are passionate about Free and Open Software, especially KDE, one of the foremost communities of any kind in the world. There is a variety of tasks to fit with diverse interests and skills.

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest:

• Amarok harmonizes playlist-related actions (double-clicking, pressing Enter, middle clicking...); optimization: removing tens of thousands of tracks from a playlist is now much faster
• Nepomuk simplifies storage code with big performance gains; user data needs to be migrated to the new format
• Calligra updates author profile actions when configuration changes
• Krita adds Clipboard brush, Isolated Mode for nodes, can convert a paint layer to any mask and back using a menu
• libkface introduces new face recognition API.

Read the rest of the Digest here.

Today KDE released the beta of the new 4.11 versions of Workspaces, Applications, and Development Platform. With API, dependency and feature freezes in place, the KDE team's focus is now on fixing bugs and further polishing.

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest:

• In KDE Workspace, Battery Monitor improves the way multiple batteries are displayed; KWin introduces cross-fading with previous pixmap and adds Wayland seat and backend support; a new"Configure" button for notifications that opens KNotify settings for the app that emitted the notification
• KStars gets a new Data menu and sees multiple menu reorganizations
• Solid add support for the Power Supply property
• Akonadi introduces NotificationMessageV2 that supports batch operations on set of entities
• Calligra adds resource categorizing with tags
• Amarok gains an audio analyzer visualization applet, fixes playing of tracks passed on command line; pressing enter when searching collections now adds found tracks to the playlist and clears the search bar
• NetworkManagement adds initial Wimax support
• Kopete gains a new history plugin based on sqlite
• Print manager can filter the jobs again.

Read the rest of the Digest here.

Today KDE released updates for its Workspaces, Applications and Development Platform. These updates continue the series of monthly stabilization updates to the 4.10 series. 4.10.4 updates bring many bugfixes and translation updates on top of the 4.10 release and are recommended updates for everyone running the 4.10 release series. As this release only contains bugfixes and translation updates, it will be a safe and pleasant update for everyone.

The announcement of the students accepted for Google Summer of Code (GSoC) and Outreach Program for Women (OPW) 2013 opens a new chapter in KDE contribution. KDE has participated in GSoC since its first season in 2005. Every year is special and exciting for both the students and the KDE Community.