KDE Blogs 

Spent some time today getting the OpenChange resource for Akonadi up and running again. I haven't really done anything to improve it from where it was a few months ago (OK, September 2007, when I was on holidays), but it lives again. Read More

In my last blog, the screenshot showed a broken image. Thanks to some very fast work by Tobias König (tokoe), it now works. That picture of Konqi was uploaded to the server using Outlook, and downloaded using OpenChange and Akonadi, before being rendered. Read More

Based on reactions to my previous blog entry I'd like to add a bit of context regarding the GSoC idea of implementing a GLib/GObject based client library for Akonadi. The whole architecture of Akonadi is based on the idea not to depend on any specific library but to make the data storage access protocol, and D-Bus for out-of-band notifications, the only requirements for clients. Learning from the non-adoption of DCOP and KIO, both also out-of-process service infrastructure projects, due to the lack of visible alternatives to the respective KDE based client libraries, the developers of Akonadi acknowledge the need to at least a second, independent, client library implementation. Read More

Student? Love KDE and/or openSUSE? Want to get 0x1194 bucks for improving them? Then check out the openSUSE Google Summer of Code ideas page or suggest your own project. There are a number of projects listed already which would improve KDE on openSUSE and upstream. As well as getting paid, it's an opportunity to work on a real world project, and learn from the experience of some leading KDE and openSUSE developers. Read More

Only three days left to apply as a student for the Summer of Code for either KDE or openSUSE ideas. So how about spending this week-end thinking what you could do this summer? Let me list some ideas I would like to see done: Read More

Google Summer of Code has started taking student proposals. This year Strigi is joining the KDE project in Google Summer of Code again. For students looking for a nice project in information technology in the true sense of the word, Strigi is the project to join. Read More

We probably all know the situation: I finally fixes the last bug in Soprano. Yes, I know, there probably is no such thing as the last bug. But it feels good to lie to myself in this case. The redesigned Nepomuk server is done and it works smoothly. First of all, the Nepomuk Server is no KDED module anymore. So no more 90% CPU load for KDED. It was to heavyweight for KDED anyway. As a recently learned KDED was never intended to be a general purpose service daemon but a manager for small and stable modules. So now the Nepomuk server has its own service management including dependencies handling. Each Nepomuk service runs in its own child process and can be controlled through D-Bus, either through the Nepomuk server's service manager or the processes interface directly (The idea of course is not new: I took the ProcessControl class from Akonadi, thanks guys). This has several advantages: Read More

Since the Akonadi related applications for GSoC so far have been mostly about interfacing with external PIM data storage systems, e.g. Google's web based apps, I'd like to a bit of advertising for two other things we'd really like to have somebody working on. Read More

If you're a student and if you're still searching for a suitable GSoC 2008 idea then Marble might offer a chance to participate in a young, vivid and interesting project. We suggest that you have a look at the Google Summer of Code Ideas page. There are especially three ideas which seem to be exciting and very important: Vector Tiles: We'd like to see a similar concept implemented for all geographical features as the one we are using for Textures: Usage of tiles. Especially for vectors this would be interesting as we could live render e.g. Open Street Map or VMap 0 data. Panoramio/Wikipedia photo support: This would enable Marble to show thumbnails from georeferenced photos such as those from Panoramio, Wikipedia (or whatever image source is suggested by the applicant). Technically this work would extend Marble's KML support (which is currently being ported to a new QXmlStreamReader based framework). OSM Annotations: This project was suggested by Adriaan de Groot and Armijn Hemel and is meant to provide on-screen OSM Annotation support. Of course providing OpenStreetMap support is an important goal for Marble and the suggestions for this idea seem pretty reasonable and realistic for the given timeframe (and dealing with UMPC devices seems to promise lots of fun). Of course we appreciate any other ideas for Marble development as well. Creative ideas get extra bonus points. If you want to find out what Marble Development is about then I recommend that you check out my "Marble's Secrets" blog entries: Part I was a Do-It-Yourself course about creating maps for Marble. We've seen how Marble manages to even display features such as aerial photos or OpenStreetMap. Part II showed how Marble paints the different map layers. We've also seen why Marble only needs very little disk space and memory for its default map - making it an ideal choice for solutions that involve little hardware resources (like the Asus EeePC and the OLPC). Part III looks beyond Marble's offline mode: It describes how Marble fetches its data from the internet. But hurry up: Deadline for GSoC 2008 student applications is on Monday! For help or questions you can join us on IRC ( irc.kde.org, #kde-edu ) or send a mail to our mailing list.

Some people already think we do a damn fine job packaging KDE at openSUSE. But we're just a few guys and we'd do it even better with your help. Tonight at 1900UTC we're having our latest openSUSE-KDE IRC meeting in #opensuse-kde on FreeNode and we'd love to see you there. This is addressed to anyone who uses KDE on openSUSE and values the way KDE works there, whether you just booted a KDE 4 Live CD or if you can remember KDE 1.1 on SuSE 6.4 and have your name on half of kdelibs. In return we value your attention, so we can tell you what's coming up, your feedback, so we do it right, and your time - if you can help us plan features or organise squashing our bugs or tell us about the things we overlook because we are used to them, KDE gets better. Read More