Kontact

Kontact is an all in one personal information manager and groupware software suite for KDE with support for calendars, contacts, notes, to-do lists, news, and email. The screenshots below captures each section.

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Kontact embeds the following

• Summary Page: Shows unread email, upcoming appointments, the latest news and weather
• Mail: KMail – The KDE email client.
• Contacts: KAddressBook – The KDE Address Book
• Calendar: KOrganizer – A Personal Organizer for KDE
• To-dos: KOrganizer
• Journal: KOrganizer
• Notes: KNotes – KDE Notes Management
• Feeds: Akregator – A KDE news aggregator
• News (Usenet): KNode
• News Ticker: KNewsTicker
• Weather: KWeather

Related Link:
Kontact at Wikipedia: Link

Yakuake

I realized I hadn’t posted about Yakuake, which have come to completely replace the standard Terminal on my computer. What is it? A drop-down terminal emulator based on KDE Konsole technology that smoothly rolls down from the top of your screen with the command of a key. It closes just as simply. It uses a tabbed interface and has configurable dimensions (width, height) and animation speed as well as it is skinnable.

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Yakuake at getdeb: Link

Dual/Multi boot or Virtualbox?

When deciding to use more than one OS on one computer it can be of value to know that there is more than one option. This article is based on personal preferences of typist of this weblog.

Personally I do not feel particularly comfortable messing around with partitions but I have despite this managed multi boots in the past and this through gParted (a Partition Editor application). I found that handling the partitions on my computer was both discouraging and confusing and not all too simple either. The program I am about to present handles multi operating systems with a sense of alleviation since it does not include managing of partitions. Instead it runs on the desktop (Windows and Linux), it is installed inside the Windows or Linux installation and runs like any other program on your computer.

VirtualBox is one option to dual/multi boot: VirtualBox is a commercial and proprietary X86 virtualization software package produced by German software company innotek GmbH. VirtualBox supports Linux, Mac OS X, OS/2 Warp (experimental OSE builds), Windows, and OpenSolaris hosts. Supported guest operating systems include FreeBSD, Linux, OpenBSD, OS/2 Warp, Windows and Solaris. In January 2007, after several years of development, VirtualBox OSE (Open source edition), a limited, open-source version, was released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). — Continue to read about VirtualBox on Wikipedia: Link or on the VirtualBox Home Page where VirtualBox also can be downloaded from: Link

The pros I find in this arrangement:

1. (The great) Option to use dynamically expanding disc space for the virtual OS.
2. No handling of partitions.
3. (Using WindowsXP) I am still logged on my favorite OS (Kubuntu Gutsy + KDE4) while having the unlimited benifits from WindowsXP contary to Wine & Wine-Doors which are much limited.

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Tip:
To change the size of your virtualbox; change the screen resolution within the virtual OS.

amarokFS (Full Screen)

amarokFS is an Amarok script serving as a screensaver that display the song that is currently playing in Amarok, in a simple & clean style.

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Last.Fm + Kubuntu = True

This Last.Fm player lets you tune in to stations/the type of music of your choice. With Last.fm on your computer you can scrobble(?) your tracks, share your music taste, listen to personalised radio streams, and discover new music and people.

Requires a Last.Fm account.

Last.Fm Download Page: Link
(Note: The Last.Fm player is also available to install through “Add/Remove Programs” in your K-menu)

Last.Fm is a social music community that keeps track of what music you listen to, and then produces a large number of features personalised to you. You can use Last.fm to listen to music, find out about artists you may like, other people with similar music taste, gigs in your local area, charts and quilts for your personal site, as well as much more. Last.Fm is totally free to sign up and use.

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Flock Browser – The Social Web Browser

Flock is a free web browser that makes it easy to connect with your friends and express yourself online. Upload photos, blog anything, subscribe to RSS, drag’n’drop photos and videos, and get notified when the people you care about update their spaces on the web.

Flock is an open source company that innovates on the superior, constantly-improving Mozilla architecture to provide a fast, safe and competitive browsing experience.

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KubXtra

KubXtra is a script kommander utility to provide installation of packages in all simplicity, useful for the beginners on Kubuntu. The captures below are of all software available through version 7.10-11 of KubXtra.

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Related Links
KubXtra at Softpedia: Link

KBW – Krazy Brain Word

In smoe lgnagaues, it dseon’t mttaer in waht oedrr the ltteres in a wrod are for uedntsrdnanig it. Tihs is bacesue the hamun mnid deos not raed erevy ltteer by iestlf but the wrod as a wlohe.
Kzary biarn wrod hples you tipyng scuh txet.
Hvae fun!
For more information, visit:
http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/personal/matt.davis/Cmabrigde/

With support for accentuated languages version 0.2 KBW twists the words with a mouse click creating crazy fun words for the brain.

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Krazy Brain Word (KBW) at Opendesktop.org: Link

Indywiki – A visual browser for Wikipedia

The Indywiki logo:

Explore the online encyclopedia with (version 0.9.7) of Indywiki. Indywiki is an open source project that aims to explore different ways of visually browsing Wikipedia pages. Enter search term, images according to search term are listed with the option to click on an image and let it take you to the related article.

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Related Links
Indywiki at Softpedia: Link
Screenshots: Link

Squash 0.3

Squash is a cross-platform, friendly and usable application that allows resizing of images in a batch mode. Currently in percentage, pixel option perhaps on next release?

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Squash at Softpedia.com: Link
Squash at Kde-apps.org: Link