KDE PIM/News/2004

December 18, 2004: Application of the Month: KPilot

A new issue of the series "Application of the Month" has been released. It covers an application from the KDE PIM suite called KPilot. Besides the application review we interviewed its current maintainer Adriaan de Groot. KPilot is a replacement for the Palm Desktop software from Palm Inc, which makes your Palm/Palm Pilot/Visor handheld capable of exchanging information with your KDE powered computer. If you want to help us creating this monthly series or you want to translate it to your own language please contact us. Enjoy App of the Month in Dutch, English and German.

December 8, 2004: KDE 3.3.2 Released

The KDE project announced the availability of KDE 3.3.2, a maintenance release for the latest generation of the most advanced and powerful Free Software desktop for GNU/Linux and other UNIXes. KDE 3.3.2 ships with lot of bug fixes since KDE 3.3.1 and is available in 52 languages (now including Afrikaans and Galician). Sources, build script and contributed packages are linked on the KDE 3.3.2 info page.

November 10, 2004: Kontact gets OpenGroupware.org Support

Read the details at the dot.

November 4, 2004: Application of the Month: KAddressBook

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 this series? Do you think we should write more about cool KDE applications? Please, contact us if you want to help!

October 27, 2004: Kontact/KMail receives Linux New Media Award

Read the details at the dot. 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. For further information check the official press statement.

October 21, 2004: Kontact Article available online

Linux-Magazine has released a verbose story on Kontact and its support for groupware servers.

October 12, 2004: KDE 3.3.1 is released

On October 12th 2004, the KDE Project released KDE 3.3.1. For packages, please visit the KDE 3.3.1 Info Page and browse the KDE 3.3 Requirements list.

August 19, 2004: Kontact 1.0 released

Version 1.0 of Kontact, the KDE groupware client suite, has been released along with KDE PIM 3.3. It features support for the Kolab server, eGroupware and SUSE Openexchange. Starting with this release, Kontact is considered stable. The KDE PIM package is also backwards compatible with KDE 3.2.

August 19, 2004: KDE 3.3 is released

On August 19th 2004, the KDE Project released KDE 3.3. For packages, please visit the KDE 3.3 Info Page and browse the KDE 3.3 Requirements list.

August 18, 2004: ZDNet UK: Linux desktop closes in on Windows

ZDNet UK reports: "The new version of KDE has a completely new email client, in one of many improvements designed to close the features gap with Windows".

July 27, 2004: Second KDE Kontact Bug Squashing Day was a success

Read the report by KDE Kontact developer Till Adam in his blog on kdedevelopers.org.

July 22, 2004: KDE Kontact at USENIX 2004 Annual Technical Conference

From June 27th to July 2nd 2004 the USENIX Annual Technical Conference took place at Boston. The FREENIX track featured a refereed paper about Kontact and how it is used as an application integration framework which was presented by Cornelius Schumacher. You can find the paper and the slides of the presentation at the Kontact home page.

July 8, 2004: Kontact Artwork News, Interviews with Dariusz Arciszewski and David Vignoni

In an effort to bring the kde-look.org community's creative power to Kontact, a contest was launched some time ago: the Kontact Splash Screen Contest. It's time to present the winner: Dariusz Arciszewski, and to know a bit about him. There are news at the icons front as well. David Vignoni, of Nuvola Iconset fame, is designing a set of task oriented icons for use in Kontact, replacing the application oriented icons. We asked David some questions about his work and KDE. Read more...

June 29, 2004: Free Groupware Solution for SMBs

PCLinuxOnline features a Howto article about the setup of Kontact CVS and eGroupware. A Free Groupware solution for small and medium sized businesses.

June 9, 2004: Kontact 0.8.3 released

Kontact 0.8.3 has been released as part of KDE 3.2.3. This is the third bugfix release of KDE Kontact and can be downloaded by visiting download.kde.org.

June 9, 2004: KDE 3.2.3 is released

On June 9th 2004, the KDE Project released KDE 3.2.3. Read the detailed KDE 3.2.3 change log For packages, please visit the KDE 3.2.3 info page and browse the KDE 3.2 Requirements list.

June 2, 2004: KDE: Putting Linux on the desktop

SearchEnterpriseLinux.com has published an article reviewing the core enterprise applications in KDE including Kontact.

April 19, 2004: Kontact 0.8.2 released

Kontact 0.8.2 has been released as part of KDE 3.2.2. This is the second bugfix release of KDE Kontact and can be downloaded by visiting download.kde.org.

April 19, 2004: KDE 3.2.2 is released

On April 19th 2004, the KDE Project released KDE 3.2.2. Read the detailed KDE 3.2.2 change log For packages, please visit the KDE 3.2.2 info page and browse the KDE 3.2 Requirements list.

April 16, 2004: New Kontact shopping system

A new shopping system is now open on this website. This system gives you the Kontact user a greater degree of control over the design and development of Kontact and components. If you are waiting for a bug to be fixed or a new feature to be implemented then this system can help put an end to the waiting.

April 14, 2004: Review of Address Books for Linux

Complementing the recent organizer and mail client reviews is this LinuxPlanet review of address books, including a section on KAddressBook.

March 24, 2004: KOrganizer selected as LWN Editor's choice

In this article the LWN editor test drived a number of calendar applications before deciding to replace ical with KOrganizer. Congratulations to the KOrganizer team.

March 24, 2004: Comparative review of mail clients

Kristian Eide has written a comparative review of "The Next Generation of Mail Clients". Which includes a section on Kontact and KMail. Kristian includes a table indicating that HTML mail composition, built-in support for Spam filtering and Follow-ups are not supported in the version of Kontact he tested. However the new and improved version of Kontact under development already includes all these features and more.

March 24, 2004: relevantive: KDE 3.2.0 Expert Inspection, including Kontact usability

relevantive AG conducts usability studies or expert inspections of current linux applications every six to nine months. In March 2004, relevantive published a KDE 3.2.0 Expert Inspection. The major concern of this inspection was to evaluate if the problems that were identified in the usability study were improved in the KDE 3.2.0 release. The evaluation was conducted on the basis of the use cases that were utilised in the linux usability study. The report is available for download (in German language only) as PDF document (~ 1.1 MB).

March 9, 2004: Kontact 0.8.1 released

Kontact 0.8.1 has been released as part of KDE 3.2.1. This is the first bugfix release of KDE Kontact and can be downloaded by visiting download.kde.org.

March 9, 2004: KDE 3.2.1 is released

The KDE project today announced the immediate availability of KDE 3.2.1, a maintenance release for the latest generation of the most advanced and powerful free desktop for GNU/Linux and other UNIXes. KDE 3.2.1 ships with lot of bug fixes since KDE 3.2 and is available in 49 languages (now including Bengali, Icelandic, Japanese, Lithuanian, Low Saxon, Latin Serbian and Tajik). Sources and contributed packages are linked on the KDE 3.2.1 info page.

February 16, 2004: Explanation of KDE PIM branches

You're not sure which version of KDE PIM you should download from the KDE CVS? So read on for better explanation of the different branches of KDE PIM. Thanks a lot to Bo Thorsen for this explanation.

February 7, 2004: Junior jobs for KDE-PIM 3.3

The upcoming KDEPIM 3.3 release offers us new opportunities to try to work on our software offerings in a professional manner. Because KDEPIM is dedicated to working with a stable foundation -- KDELIBS 3.2 and KDEBASE 3.2 -- it should be easier to follow development, because you can follow KDEPIM while keeping both KDELIBS and KDEBASE unchanged.

Since we want a polished and professional 3.3 release there's lots of little jobs that need to be done. Some of these jobs are ideal for people just getting started in KDE development, like fixing drag-and-drop of files on KPilot's installer. Others -- documentation, screenshots, promotion -- are open for everyone who doesn't want to be a developer. All of this is part of the drive to make KDEPIM 3.3 a high-quality release. It all fits in the KDE Quality Team framework. In fact, the KDEPIM Quality Team is the first large-scale team to be formed and is serving as a test-bed for Quality Team development.

Read on and learn more about the junior jobs.

February 4, 2004: Kontact 0.8 released

Kontact 0.8 has been released as part of KDE 3.2. This stable but feature incomplete version is part of the KDE-PIM package and can be downloaded by visiting download.kde.org. This is the first official release of KDE Kontact as part KDE.

February 3, 2004: KDE 3.2 Released

KDE Project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of KDE 3.2, the third major release of the award-winning KDE3 desktop platform. KDE 3.2 is the result of a combined year-long effort by hundreds of individuals and corporations from around the globe. This diverse team has been working successfully together since 1997 to make KDE the leading Open Source desktop software for Linux and UNIX. Read complete announcement on the KDE.org website.

For detailed information about the new KDE release, please refer to the following pages:

official KDE 3.2 announcement
KDE 3.2 info page
KDE 3.1.5 to KDE 3.2.0 Changelog, including all changes in KDE-PIM.

January 17, 2004: KDEPIM 3.3 release plan

On January 4, 2004, Cornelius Schumacher published the KDEPIM 3.3 release plan. "This is the plan for the release of KDEPIM 3.3. It will be the first release of the kdepim module independent of the rest of KDE. The main goal is to deliver the features which were almost ready for 3.2 but finally didn't make it into the KDE 3.2 release." You find the complete release plan on the website developer.kde.org.

January 15, 2004: KDE PIM meeting in Osnabrueck report

pim.kde.org has a nice story on the KDE PIM meeting in Osnabrueck. There are individual reports from the participants, as well as news on the KDE PIM 3.3 release schedule and kolab client intergration. When browsing the pictures, make sure to compare this years group photo with the one from last year.

January 11, 2004: Kontact ported to OSX

Today KDE Kontact got successfully ported to Apple's OSX. See a screenshot here. For more info on the KDE's OSX port read here and here.

January 11, 2004: Major website update

This website got a major update... enjoy! The news on this site is now also available as an RDF news feed (http://kontact.org/news.rdf).

January 4, 2004: Release and feature plan for KDE PIM

KDE PIM release and feature plans where put on the developer.kde.org website.

January 3, 2004: KDE PIM meeting in Osnabrueck

The KDE PIM developers met in Osnabrueck (Germany) to discuss about and hack on the KDE-PIM application family. Main topics for the meeting are finalizing the Kolab client integration, discussing the planned separate Kontact/KDE PIM release and lots of hacking.