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billybob2 writes "PolishLinux.org has an extensive screenshot review and commentary on the development version of the Free and Open Source KDE desktop. Highlights include the ability to run any desktop applet prepared for Mac OS X inside Plasma, on-the-fly annotation and rating of files from within the Dolphin file manager. It also has an improved GUI for the Amarok music player, flexible 3D eye candy configuration in KWin, and improved support for both accessing digital cameras via the Solid hardware layer and the DigiKam photo manager."

GREYCstoration is an open-source tool able to de-noise, inpaint, or resize 2D color images. This is a command-line program developed by the IMAGE team of the GREYC Lab in France and is available for Unix, Mac, and Windows systems under the CeCILL license. The algorithm is based on anisotropic diffusion partial differential equations. These equations are able to smooth an image while preserving its main structures. The demo page presents interesting examples of color image de-noising and reconstruction. This is a serious free alternative to commercial products like Noise Ninja or Neat Image that perform the same kinds of operations. The tool is still a little bit hard to use (command-line based), but I hope the simple C++ API will ease the integration of the algorithm in more user-friendly interfaces. Previous versions of GREYCstoration are already available in Digikam and Krita.

IceFox writes "In the past few years many of us have been introduced to a new type of application, the Type Manager. Most of us are familiar with iTunes, but there are many other Type Managers out there that are gaining market share and a rabid fan base of users such as digiKam and amaroK. Type Managers seem to have that magic combinations of features that makes users love them. I have been taken a closer look at the Type Manager, what makes them so usefull, what they really provide for the user and came to some surprising results. After creating a list of all the traits of a Type Manager I was able to define exactly what a file manager should be and discovered that there are in fact many partial Type Managers out there now that implemented only half of what makes up a full Type Manager."