Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader writes "According to DesktopLinux.com, a new music download service was launched recently by theKompany.com that, unlike iTunes and Napster, targets Linux desktops. Mindawn is claimed to provide CD-quality song files and 'virtually no' digital rights management (DRM) restrictions, offer full previews of the entire songs, and provide downloads in a variety of formats." There's also an interview with the founder.

Karma Sucks writes "Rekall is one of those killer apps alongside Scribus, Evolution, OpenOffice and Mozilla that could make all the difference for Linux desktop productivity. For those of you not in the know, Rekall is a RAD DBMS similar to MS Access or Paradox and has now been GPL'ed by theKompany. Community development and organization is to take place on rekallrevealed.org."

Karma Sucks writes "Rekall is one of those killer apps alongside Scribus, Evolution, OpenOffice and Mozilla that could make all the difference for Linux desktop productivity. For those of you not in the know, Rekall is a RAD DBMS similar to MS Access or Paradox and has now been GPL'ed by theKompany. Community development and organization is to take place on rekallrevealed.org."

Karma Sucks writes "Rekall is one of those killer apps alongside Scribus, Evolution, OpenOffice and Mozilla that could make all the difference for Linux desktop productivity. For those of you not in the know, Rekall is a RAD DBMS similar to MS Access or Paradox and has now been GPL'ed by theKompany. Community development and organization is to take place on rekallrevealed.org."

gatch writes "theKompany.com released version 1.0 of their cross-platform PIM suite Aethera. KOrganizer is included as a calendar and todo list component. Check out these screenshots. According to Shawn Gordon, theKompany president, 'Actually we are about 2 weeks away from having Aethera work with Kolab [groupware server] - at least that is our sense of it at the moment.' Interesting discussion at KDE.news."

gatch writes "theKompany.com released version 1.0 of their cross-platform PIM suite Aethera. KOrganizer is included as a calendar and todo list component. Check out these screenshots. According to Shawn Gordon, theKompany president, 'Actually we are about 2 weeks away from having Aethera work with Kolab [groupware server] - at least that is our sense of it at the moment.' Interesting discussion at KDE.news."

An anonymous reader writes "Ever wondered how commercial Linux Web development environments stack up against those for other OS's? There's a reivew at Digital-Web of Quanta Gold, the commercial HTML editor from theKompany.com. I've always been a fan of Quanta Plus, but it's interesting to see what the commercial application has (and doesn't have). The full review of Quanta Gold can be found here."

Slashback with more on Linux telephony, Mailblocks' terms of service, the scary disease known as SARS, the status of civilian GPS accuracy and more -- read on for the details.

A good oversight to correct. AndyMan! writes "Regarding yesterdays 'Building A Better Inbox,' I got the following email from support@mailblocks.com:

"'Our apologies, we picked up an old version of our TOS when we went live. We will NOT be allowing 3rd parties to send unsolicited email to our userbase. Please check the site this evening for the updated and correct TOS. We apologize for any confusion or inconvenience.'"

All the government you pay for. dunng808 writes "Despite frequent speculation to the contrary, Security Enhanced Linux is alive and well. Government Executive Magazine has a report from a conference on open-source software at which Peter Loscocco, a senior NSA scientist, revealed that the agency has continued to work on SE Linux despite efforts by Microsoft and the Initiative for Software Choice. "We spent a lot of time educating our managers, who accepted a lot of the flack that has come back to NSA about SE Linux," Loscocco said. For those readers trying to win acceptance of open-source software in the workplace, what effort have you undertaken to educate management, and what has worked?"

Also safe for now is GPS. As an anonymous reader writes, "Following last week's thread on GPS, and the possibility that the Pentagon might goof around with the civilian signal, Forbes checks in with the folks in charge and finds we have nothing to worry about."

OK, both of these things involve series of coherent vibrations in air ... A few months back, we mentioned that TheKompany was selling software to let Zaurus owners use Net2Phone for telephone service, and that they were working on a desktop version as well. Well, now it's ready. HeUnique writes "TheKompany just released tkcphone for the Linux desktop. This is the first product which lets Linux users to use their existing net2phone accounts to talk either through net2phone to net2phone or net2phone to standard POTS phone with the best audio quality (G.729 codec)."

And in almost-but-not-totally-unrelated news, jackjumper writes "Shawn Gordon of The Kompany fame has started his own record label, ProgRock Records. From the interview at Linux and Main: "The idea...is to provide progressive rock music to listeners at a low price while allowing more of that money to find its way to the artists' pockets than happens with conventional recording contracts and at the same time making a gesture -- you know the one -- to the established recording cartel." This sounds really cool."

A deadly pathogen by any other name. waytoomuchcoffee writes "The leading hypothesis for what is causing Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) is now thought to be a coronavirus, one of the virii that can cause the common cold. The New York Times (archive version for those non-members) has a story here. The global toll is now more than 750 stricken and 22 dead. Singapore is quarantining hundreds of people in an effort to stop the outbreak, while the head of the city's hospitals has taken ill with symptoms consistent with SARS. Both the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization have pages up now, which include FAQs and progression information."

How many times do we have to go over this? Vajsvarana writes "The major free Desktop Environment GNOME and KDE has released a common open statement on recent XFree86 troubles. 'Innovation should happen in the open, with all affected parties able to participate early in the process' seems a clear and strong request to XFree86 people."

Slashback with more on Linux telephony, Mailblocks' terms of service, the scary disease known as SARS, the status of civilian GPS accuracy and more -- read on for the details.

A good oversight to correct. AndyMan! writes "Regarding yesterdays 'Building A Better Inbox,' I got the following email from support@mailblocks.com:

"'Our apologies, we picked up an old version of our TOS when we went live. We will NOT be allowing 3rd parties to send unsolicited email to our userbase. Please check the site this evening for the updated and correct TOS. We apologize for any confusion or inconvenience.'"

All the government you pay for. dunng808 writes "Despite frequent speculation to the contrary, Security Enhanced Linux is alive and well. Government Executive Magazine has a report from a conference on open-source software at which Peter Loscocco, a senior NSA scientist, revealed that the agency has continued to work on SE Linux despite efforts by Microsoft and the Initiative for Software Choice. "We spent a lot of time educating our managers, who accepted a lot of the flack that has come back to NSA about SE Linux," Loscocco said. For those readers trying to win acceptance of open-source software in the workplace, what effort have you undertaken to educate management, and what has worked?"

Also safe for now is GPS. As an anonymous reader writes, "Following last week's thread on GPS, and the possibility that the Pentagon might goof around with the civilian signal, Forbes checks in with the folks in charge and finds we have nothing to worry about."

OK, both of these things involve series of coherent vibrations in air ... A few months back, we mentioned that TheKompany was selling software to let Zaurus owners use Net2Phone for telephone service, and that they were working on a desktop version as well. Well, now it's ready. HeUnique writes "TheKompany just released tkcphone for the Linux desktop. This is the first product which lets Linux users to use their existing net2phone accounts to talk either through net2phone to net2phone or net2phone to standard POTS phone with the best audio quality (G.729 codec)."

And in almost-but-not-totally-unrelated news, jackjumper writes "Shawn Gordon of The Kompany fame has started his own record label, ProgRock Records. From the interview at Linux and Main: "The idea...is to provide progressive rock music to listeners at a low price while allowing more of that money to find its way to the artists' pockets than happens with conventional recording contracts and at the same time making a gesture -- you know the one -- to the established recording cartel." This sounds really cool."

A deadly pathogen by any other name. waytoomuchcoffee writes "The leading hypothesis for what is causing Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) is now thought to be a coronavirus, one of the virii that can cause the common cold. The New York Times (archive version for those non-members) has a story here. The global toll is now more than 750 stricken and 22 dead. Singapore is quarantining hundreds of people in an effort to stop the outbreak, while the head of the city's hospitals has taken ill with symptoms consistent with SARS. Both the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization have pages up now, which include FAQs and progression information."

How many times do we have to go over this? Vajsvarana writes "The major free Desktop Environment GNOME and KDE has released a common open statement on recent XFree86 troubles. 'Innovation should happen in the open, with all affected parties able to participate early in the process' seems a clear and strong request to XFree86 people."

Greg Herlein writes "There is finally a way to do direct PC to Phone calling from linux: GnomeMeeting now supports decent quality, low-cost VoIP calls to any real phone in the world. It's about time." The calls are through a company called MicroTelco; read this FAQ page to learn more about it. (And don't forget TheKompany's approach to IP-telephony-with-Linux, using a Sharp Zaurus plus Net2Phone.)

Christopher Rath asks: "Earlier this month, a reference to Clay Shirky's piece on ZapMail was posted as a Slashdot article. An obvious (to me) next step, which was hinted at in a couple of the postings which followed, was for the Internet community---you and me---to put up a VoIP directory server. I want to use an Analog Telephone Adapter (ATA), like the Cisco ATA or The Kompany's new tkcPhone, to talk to other guys who have ATAs too; I have very little interest in making a local call using the ATA (for that I've still got my Bell land-line). Surely someone has already started such a project, if not, why not?"

"To make investing in an ATA worthwhile, I need an easy method of establishing a connection. In the current broadband environment, where most of us don't have static IP addresses, this means that we need our ATA to register itself with some VoIP directory server that can be used to assist with "dialing the number": as a user I want to remember my friend's ATA number, and then the directory server maps this to the ATA's current address. Once my ATA has the other ATA's address, the call should be ATA-to-ATA without any burden on the directory server."

Christopher Rath asks: "Earlier this month, a reference to Clay Shirky's piece on ZapMail was posted as a Slashdot article. An obvious (to me) next step, which was hinted at in a couple of the postings which followed, was for the Internet community---you and me---to put up a VoIP directory server. I want to use an Analog Telephone Adapter (ATA), like the Cisco ATA or The Kompany's new tkcPhone, to talk to other guys who have ATAs too; I have very little interest in making a local call using the ATA (for that I've still got my Bell land-line). Surely someone has already started such a project, if not, why not?"

"To make investing in an ATA worthwhile, I need an easy method of establishing a connection. In the current broadband environment, where most of us don't have static IP addresses, this means that we need our ATA to register itself with some VoIP directory server that can be used to assist with "dialing the number": as a user I want to remember my friend's ATA number, and then the directory server maps this to the ATA's current address. Once my ATA has the other ATA's address, the call should be ATA-to-ATA without any burden on the directory server."

arb writes "The Age has an interview with Shawn Gordon, president of theKompany.com where he discusses such issues as RedHat's focus on Gnome and the relegation of KDE 'to second best', other Gnome vs KDE issues, distributions including proprietary bits and so on."

GonzoJohn writes "Looks like TheKompany has released an ogg rippoer for CDs: "tkcOggRipper is a freely available (but not GPL) program for easily and conveniently ripping CDs into the Ogg Vorbis format. If you are not familiar with Ogg Vorbis, it is available from Xiph (www.xiph.org). It compresses smaller and creates higher fidelity files than MP3. Ogg Vorbis also doesn't have any license time bombs or restrictions associated with it as MP3 does. You can look here to see what we mean. MP3 royalties will cost you either directly as a producer or indirectly as a consumer. One problem with Ogg Vorbis has been a lack of easy to use tools for ripping CDs into the Ogg Vorbis format -- they were confusing or command line based. This led us to write tkcOggRipper, which couldn't be more easy to use. Pop in a CD, pick an ouput directory and select a "Quality" setting, and go. tkcOggRipper is currently available for Linux and Windows, and we hope to release a version for Mac OS X soon."

volsung writes "A lot of us want portable music players with Vorbis support, right? Well, Xiph.org has decided to help speed the process by releasing their integerized Vorbis decoder, named "Tremor," under a BSD-like license. Tremor is a Vorbis decoding library written for CPUs without floating point hardware, like most handheld devices use. It was previously a proprietary library--licensed by theKompany for their Sharp Zaurus player, among others--but now it's available for everyone to use. The release page also gives contact information for many of the popular hardware manufacturers. If you want Vorbis support in your hardware, now is the time to send some emails! (Also, please say thanks to the Xiph.org crew with a donation if you can.)"

Gentu writes "OSNews features an interview with Shawn Gordon, president of TheKompany. Shawn talks about version 1.0 of Aethera and Kapital coming out in September, porting a lot of their Qt apps to MacOSX, the future of Linux on the desktop, how the embedded Linux market was surprisingly successful financially for them, as well as selling well their desktop apps. It is really encouraging to read that a desktop-oriented company actually made real money from Linux this year!"

Slashback this fine tax-day evening (you did remember, right?) brings you updates on Gentoo Linux, Mike Myer's brush with the Humor Police, Microsoft's spin on the waning Hailstorm, and more. Read on for the details.

A tornado's worth of spin control. telstar writes "The Code Report is reporting that last week's story from the New York Times concerning the death of Hailstorm was not entirely accurate. A Microsoft spokesperson has stated that Microsoft is shifting from a model in which MSN was the sole operator to a model where the operation of these services is available to multiple operators."

Onan Meets Midas. daoine writes: "Reversing the outcome of an earlier argument, boston.com is reporting that MGM and New Line Cinema have reached an agreement that permits New Line to continue with the Goldmember name. It also stipulates that further satirical names must be approved by MGM."

Does dishes, saves gas, freshens your breath, cleans your pets ... Apparently, Gentoo Linux is contagious. JigSaw writes: "OSNews features an interesting review of Gentoo Linux 1.0 and they call it 'the fastest loading, fastest-operating Linux distribution to date.' Gentoo may be the fastest Linux for a workstation today, but according to the review, it still has some problems, most notably, annoying bugs. However, it still manages to score a glowing 8.2 out of 10 overall."

Reader sckevyn also points to the Gentoo PowerPC page for those equipped different.

First steps always seem small. camusflage writes "Yahoo has a story from ZDNet about TheKompany's recent release of tkcPlayer for the Zaurus, which is being billed as the first portable Ogg Vorbis player. A player for a format not many people are using on a platform even fewer people are using. Admirable, but not likely to be a commercial success."

Honey, your quark is showing. ngrier writes "As a quick follow-up to the story posted here a few days ago regarding the potential quark star, the NASA APOD today is a picture of the aforementioned star."

Slashback this fine tax-day evening (you did remember, right?) brings you updates on Gentoo Linux, Mike Myer's brush with the Humor Police, Microsoft's spin on the waning Hailstorm, and more. Read on for the details.

A tornado's worth of spin control. telstar writes "The Code Report is reporting that last week's story from the New York Times concerning the death of Hailstorm was not entirely accurate. A Microsoft spokesperson has stated that Microsoft is shifting from a model in which MSN was the sole operator to a model where the operation of these services is available to multiple operators."

Onan Meets Midas. daoine writes: "Reversing the outcome of an earlier argument, boston.com is reporting that MGM and New Line Cinema have reached an agreement that permits New Line to continue with the Goldmember name. It also stipulates that further satirical names must be approved by MGM."

Does dishes, saves gas, freshens your breath, cleans your pets ... Apparently, Gentoo Linux is contagious. JigSaw writes: "OSNews features an interesting review of Gentoo Linux 1.0 and they call it 'the fastest loading, fastest-operating Linux distribution to date.' Gentoo may be the fastest Linux for a workstation today, but according to the review, it still has some problems, most notably, annoying bugs. However, it still manages to score a glowing 8.2 out of 10 overall."

Reader sckevyn also points to the Gentoo PowerPC page for those equipped different.

First steps always seem small. camusflage writes "Yahoo has a story from ZDNet about TheKompany's recent release of tkcPlayer for the Zaurus, which is being billed as the first portable Ogg Vorbis player. A player for a format not many people are using on a platform even fewer people are using. Admirable, but not likely to be a commercial success."

Honey, your quark is showing. ngrier writes "As a quick follow-up to the story posted here a few days ago regarding the potential quark star, the NASA APOD today is a picture of the aforementioned star."

replicant_deckard writes "In this short but insightful essay Shawn Gordon, the founder of theKompany, explains why GPL doesn't work for software companies producing graphical and end-user friendly stuff. This reminds us that GPL has so far been useful just for infrastructure-level hacker stuff like operating systems, databases etc. " Of course, it's been used for end user - OpenOffice, GAIM, and other projects.

Dre writes: "Today marks a special coincidence. First, Adam Treat released the initial version of Qt bindings for C#, which consists of 476 Qt classes converted to C#. The bindings work with the Mono compiler, runtime environment and class libraries, enabling a fully Open Source implementation of C# for Qt. While not yet ready for a real application, Adam has managed to write and execute a Hello World! program (screenshot). KDE bindings are on the drawing board. Shortly thereafter, Phil Thompson, Jim Bublitz and theKompany.com released KDE 2 and KDE 3 bindings for Python. Together with the Java, Objective C and C bindings in the kdebindings module, as well as the Ruby bindings, KDE is providing developers a broad gamut of application development languages."

Dre writes: "Today marks a special coincidence. First, Adam Treat released the initial version of Qt bindings for C#, which consists of 476 Qt classes converted to C#. The bindings work with the Mono compiler, runtime environment and class libraries, enabling a fully Open Source implementation of C# for Qt. While not yet ready for a real application, Adam has managed to write and execute a Hello World! program (screenshot). KDE bindings are on the drawing board. Shortly thereafter, Phil Thompson, Jim Bublitz and theKompany.com released KDE 2 and KDE 3 bindings for Python. Together with the Java, Objective C and C bindings in the kdebindings module, as well as the Ruby bindings, KDE is providing developers a broad gamut of application development languages."

flounder_p queries: "I have recently started playing with the Ruby programming language and think it's really great. I was just wondering why you guys think Ruby has not caught on more in the open source community than it has? How many of you guys are using it? Will it ever catch on or will it always be looked at as yet another scripting language? Don't get me wrong scripting languages are great (and I live by Perl) but I still hope to see Ruby catch on more. I would like to hear opinions on things on why Ruby is good or bad not on why OOP is good or bad. We have already had that discussion here." On a side note, a little birdy tells me that BlackAdder has plans for Ruby support in its next beta.

Lots of software houses write software for GNU/Linux, but one company that's taking a different approach to products (and an unusual approach to licenses, too) is theKompany.com. TheKompany have released many open source projects, like PyQT/PyKDE, a Python binding to QT and KDE, and KoreLib, cross-platform C++ library for developing modular applications. They also combine Open Source licensed projects with plugins that they're selling: Aethera, Kivio, and closed-source products: Data Architect, (ERD & advanced SQL Editor), Kapital (a Quicken clone for Linux), among other things. Here is your chance to ask theKompany CEO Shawn Gordon questions about theKompany, Open Source, and the Linux from the commercial eye. We'll forward the best questions on to Shawn, and print his answers as soon as he gets them back to us.

Lots of software houses write software for GNU/Linux, but one company that's taking a different approach to products (and an unusual approach to licenses, too) is theKompany.com. TheKompany have released many open source projects, like PyQT/PyKDE, a Python binding to QT and KDE, and KoreLib, cross-platform C++ library for developing modular applications. They also combine Open Source licensed projects with plugins that they're selling: Aethera, Kivio, and closed-source products: Data Architect, (ERD & advanced SQL Editor), Kapital (a Quicken clone for Linux), among other things. Here is your chance to ask theKompany CEO Shawn Gordon questions about theKompany, Open Source, and the Linux from the commercial eye. We'll forward the best questions on to Shawn, and print his answers as soon as he gets them back to us.

Lots of software houses write software for GNU/Linux, but one company that's taking a different approach to products (and an unusual approach to licenses, too) is theKompany.com. TheKompany have released many open source projects, like PyQT/PyKDE, a Python binding to QT and KDE, and KoreLib, cross-platform C++ library for developing modular applications. They also combine Open Source licensed projects with plugins that they're selling: Aethera, Kivio, and closed-source products: Data Architect, (ERD & advanced SQL Editor), Kapital (a Quicken clone for Linux), among other things. Here is your chance to ask theKompany CEO Shawn Gordon questions about theKompany, Open Source, and the Linux from the commercial eye. We'll forward the best questions on to Shawn, and print his answers as soon as he gets them back to us.

Lots of software houses write software for GNU/Linux, but one company that's taking a different approach to products (and an unusual approach to licenses, too) is theKompany.com. TheKompany have released many open source projects, like PyQT/PyKDE, a Python binding to QT and KDE, and KoreLib, cross-platform C++ library for developing modular applications. They also combine Open Source licensed projects with plugins that they're selling: Aethera, Kivio, and closed-source products: Data Architect, (ERD & advanced SQL Editor), Kapital (a Quicken clone for Linux), among other things. Here is your chance to ask theKompany CEO Shawn Gordon questions about theKompany, Open Source, and the Linux from the commercial eye. We'll forward the best questions on to Shawn, and print his answers as soon as he gets them back to us.

Lots of software houses write software for GNU/Linux, but one company that's taking a different approach to products (and an unusual approach to licenses, too) is theKompany.com. TheKompany have released many open source projects, like PyQT/PyKDE, a Python binding to QT and KDE, and KoreLib, cross-platform C++ library for developing modular applications. They also combine Open Source licensed projects with plugins that they're selling: Aethera, Kivio, and closed-source products: Data Architect, (ERD & advanced SQL Editor), Kapital (a Quicken clone for Linux), among other things. Here is your chance to ask theKompany CEO Shawn Gordon questions about theKompany, Open Source, and the Linux from the commercial eye. We'll forward the best questions on to Shawn, and print his answers as soon as he gets them back to us.

Lots of software houses write software for GNU/Linux, but one company that's taking a different approach to products (and an unusual approach to licenses, too) is theKompany.com. TheKompany have released many open source projects, like PyQT/PyKDE, a Python binding to QT and KDE, and KoreLib, cross-platform C++ library for developing modular applications. They also combine Open Source licensed projects with plugins that they're selling: Aethera, Kivio, and closed-source products: Data Architect, (ERD & advanced SQL Editor), Kapital (a Quicken clone for Linux), among other things. Here is your chance to ask theKompany CEO Shawn Gordon questions about theKompany, Open Source, and the Linux from the commercial eye. We'll forward the best questions on to Shawn, and print his answers as soon as he gets them back to us.

Josh Berkus asks: "I am an expert Visual Basic programmer who is looking to adopt a different, cross-platform language with a Linux-compatible IDE. After some research, the main offerings are theKompany's BlackAdder, borland's Kylix, and ActiveState's Komodo. What are your opinions about the languages and IDEs offered in these products? Has anyone switched to one of these from VB, and what were your experiences?"

"BlackAdder supports a Python-Qt synthesis that is very attractive as both languages have Open Source verisons. Their IDE costs only $250, which is doubly attractive.

Kylix is apparently a full featured IDE based on Borland's many years of experience with Delphi. However, one has to buy both Kylix ($199) and Delphi 6 ($999) and the language is proprietary.

Komodo suffers from the lack of a widget/forms set (as far as I can tell). However, their IDE supports 3 languages right now and will support more in the future. The $295 per user price is also attractive, as is the large knowledge base of advice and code snippets."

Are there other decent RAD packages out there for Unix systems or is this pretty much the cream of the crop?

TheKompany has released a few programs that will surely interest KDE users and Linux users in general. Click below to read about their new software releases. (If you don't know what -- or who -- TheKompany is, you can read Linux.com's interview with TheKompany president Shawn Gordon.)

The first application is ReKall. Rekall is TheKompany's answer to MS Access. Lots of people have asked for this kind of application for Linux, and TheKompany in response has issued this Preview Release version. The Upcoming KOffice will include a version of Rekall. Instead of using Visual Basic like Access does, Rekall uses Python, as well as plug-ins for MySQL, Postgre-SQL, and Informix (other plug-ins for the various databases will follow.) Note: Since Rekall is using KDE-DB (also a contribution to KDE by TheKompany) and KDE-DB will be available only with the upcoming KDE 2.2; you'll need to do some simple compilation and installation. All the instructions are available at their web pages.

The next product is Aethera -- a nice PIM manager to manage all your email as well as contact information. You might say it's competing with Evolution, but both of the projects takes different direction of implementation. Aethera is also expandable with Plug-ins. (Debian packages are also available).

While ReKall and Aethera are Open Source, the last one is a commercial product called Kapital, which is an Quicken/MS Money workalike. The product costs money (you can find those prices at the above link) and it has one of the nicest and easiest GUI's I've been played with. You can download the beta to test it and find for yourself. (Debian packages are available for Kapital as well.)

TheKompany has released a few programs that will surely interest KDE users and Linux users in general. Click below to read about their new software releases. (If you don't know what -- or who -- TheKompany is, you can read Linux.com's interview with TheKompany president Shawn Gordon.)

The first application is ReKall. Rekall is TheKompany's answer to MS Access. Lots of people have asked for this kind of application for Linux, and TheKompany in response has issued this Preview Release version. The Upcoming KOffice will include a version of Rekall. Instead of using Visual Basic like Access does, Rekall uses Python, as well as plug-ins for MySQL, Postgre-SQL, and Informix (other plug-ins for the various databases will follow.) Note: Since Rekall is using KDE-DB (also a contribution to KDE by TheKompany) and KDE-DB will be available only with the upcoming KDE 2.2; you'll need to do some simple compilation and installation. All the instructions are available at their web pages.

The next product is Aethera -- a nice PIM manager to manage all your email as well as contact information. You might say it's competing with Evolution, but both of the projects takes different direction of implementation. Aethera is also expandable with Plug-ins. (Debian packages are also available).

While ReKall and Aethera are Open Source, the last one is a commercial product called Kapital, which is an Quicken/MS Money workalike. The product costs money (you can find those prices at the above link) and it has one of the nicest and easiest GUI's I've been played with. You can download the beta to test it and find for yourself. (Debian packages are available for Kapital as well.)

TheKompany has released a few programs that will surely interest KDE users and Linux users in general. Click below to read about their new software releases. (If you don't know what -- or who -- TheKompany is, you can read Linux.com's interview with TheKompany president Shawn Gordon.)

The first application is ReKall. Rekall is TheKompany's answer to MS Access. Lots of people have asked for this kind of application for Linux, and TheKompany in response has issued this Preview Release version. The Upcoming KOffice will include a version of Rekall. Instead of using Visual Basic like Access does, Rekall uses Python, as well as plug-ins for MySQL, Postgre-SQL, and Informix (other plug-ins for the various databases will follow.) Note: Since Rekall is using KDE-DB (also a contribution to KDE by TheKompany) and KDE-DB will be available only with the upcoming KDE 2.2; you'll need to do some simple compilation and installation. All the instructions are available at their web pages.

The next product is Aethera -- a nice PIM manager to manage all your email as well as contact information. You might say it's competing with Evolution, but both of the projects takes different direction of implementation. Aethera is also expandable with Plug-ins. (Debian packages are also available).

While ReKall and Aethera are Open Source, the last one is a commercial product called Kapital, which is an Quicken/MS Money workalike. The product costs money (you can find those prices at the above link) and it has one of the nicest and easiest GUI's I've been played with. You can download the beta to test it and find for yourself. (Debian packages are available for Kapital as well.)

TheKompany has released a few programs that will surely interest KDE users and Linux users in general. Click below to read about their new software releases. (If you don't know what -- or who -- TheKompany is, you can read Linux.com's interview with TheKompany president Shawn Gordon.)

The first application is ReKall. Rekall is TheKompany's answer to MS Access. Lots of people have asked for this kind of application for Linux, and TheKompany in response has issued this Preview Release version. The Upcoming KOffice will include a version of Rekall. Instead of using Visual Basic like Access does, Rekall uses Python, as well as plug-ins for MySQL, Postgre-SQL, and Informix (other plug-ins for the various databases will follow.) Note: Since Rekall is using KDE-DB (also a contribution to KDE by TheKompany) and KDE-DB will be available only with the upcoming KDE 2.2; you'll need to do some simple compilation and installation. All the instructions are available at their web pages.

The next product is Aethera -- a nice PIM manager to manage all your email as well as contact information. You might say it's competing with Evolution, but both of the projects takes different direction of implementation. Aethera is also expandable with Plug-ins. (Debian packages are also available).

While ReKall and Aethera are Open Source, the last one is a commercial product called Kapital, which is an Quicken/MS Money workalike. The product costs money (you can find those prices at the above link) and it has one of the nicest and easiest GUI's I've been played with. You can download the beta to test it and find for yourself. (Debian packages are available for Kapital as well.)

TheKompany has released a few programs that will surely interest KDE users and Linux users in general. Click below to read about their new software releases. (If you don't know what -- or who -- TheKompany is, you can read Linux.com's interview with TheKompany president Shawn Gordon.)

The first application is ReKall. Rekall is TheKompany's answer to MS Access. Lots of people have asked for this kind of application for Linux, and TheKompany in response has issued this Preview Release version. The Upcoming KOffice will include a version of Rekall. Instead of using Visual Basic like Access does, Rekall uses Python, as well as plug-ins for MySQL, Postgre-SQL, and Informix (other plug-ins for the various databases will follow.) Note: Since Rekall is using KDE-DB (also a contribution to KDE by TheKompany) and KDE-DB will be available only with the upcoming KDE 2.2; you'll need to do some simple compilation and installation. All the instructions are available at their web pages.

The next product is Aethera -- a nice PIM manager to manage all your email as well as contact information. You might say it's competing with Evolution, but both of the projects takes different direction of implementation. Aethera is also expandable with Plug-ins. (Debian packages are also available).

While ReKall and Aethera are Open Source, the last one is a commercial product called Kapital, which is an Quicken/MS Money workalike. The product costs money (you can find those prices at the above link) and it has one of the nicest and easiest GUI's I've been played with. You can download the beta to test it and find for yourself. (Debian packages are available for Kapital as well.)

MrEfficient asks: "I'm searching for an Oranizational Chart software package that stores employee data in a database. Ideally, it would be web based, or if not, at least allow client programs to access a remote database over an intranet or the internet. It can be either Linux or Windows based. All the software I've seen is little more than a drawing program which allows one to manually create a visual chart but with no way to manage the data behind it (OrgPlus is the one I've been using). This is fine when your company has less than twenty people, but completely inadequate when the company size is in the thousands. The lack of a database-backed organizational chart program is strange when you consider that the organizational chart is the most common example used when discussing trees in SQL. I've considered Kivio, a flowchart program for KDE, which isn't designed for organizational charts but looks like it could serve as one given its scriptablity. So, what do you think, does anyone have any suggestions?"

StupiDiot writes: "Aethra is a open source mail client which follows in the steps of LookOut, and is being developed by the Kompany. In case you haven't been following, Aethera is theKompany's fork of the greatly hyped/anticipated Magellan project. Beta 1 of Aethera sports POP3, SMTP, HTML, DnD, a contacts interface, sticky notes, and more. IMAP, Calendar support, etc., are promised for the next beta. There is no mention of the license although source is available from the Web site -- most of the source files seem to be under the BSD license. " So, I downloaded it and tried playing with is last night - it's a very cool, very slick program - the competition between this and the Gnome-equivalent Evolution will be interesting, as always. Regardless of which wins, the race to produce an Outlook-killer is on.

StupiDiot writes: "Aethra is a open source mail client which follows in the steps of LookOut, and is being developed by the Kompany. In case you haven't been following, Aethera is theKompany's fork of the greatly hyped/anticipated Magellan project. Beta 1 of Aethera sports POP3, SMTP, HTML, DnD, a contacts interface, sticky notes, and more. IMAP, Calendar support, etc., are promised for the next beta. There is no mention of the license although source is available from the Web site -- most of the source files seem to be under the BSD license. " So, I downloaded it and tried playing with is last night - it's a very cool, very slick program - the competition between this and the Gnome-equivalent Evolution will be interesting, as always. Regardless of which wins, the race to produce an Outlook-killer is on.

Well, as the title says - KDE 2.0 final is out! You can download it here or here or you can look at the mirrors (mirrors please!) Note: RH 6.2, FreeBSD and Solaris packages will be available soon. While you're downloading it, you may want to look at Kivio (a nice diagramming and flowcharting tool for Linux/KDE), or look for some applications for your KDE2 here. I've been using lately KDE 2.0 for a while and I must say - great work KDE team.

realberen writes: "Visual Python 0.1 is released. Quoting the Web site: Visual Python, at its current stage of development, is a set of components aimed at GNOME and KDE application developers to enable them to easily add scripting capabilities to their applications. Ah, how I love Python! :)" Does this neatly counteract the argument that MS Office applications are necessary for complex, scripted integration (via Visual Basic)?