Today a new Free Software business was launched with the goal of strengthening the Kolab groupware solution ecosystem. The former Kolab Konsortium now has a new charter and thus a new name: Kolab Systems AG. Offering services, packaging and quality assurance based on a partnership model, Kolab Systems builds its business on the proven Kolab groupware solution. This leads to a continued focus on supporting and deploying KDE personal information management (PIM) applications and server infrastructure on a variety of platforms.

This weekend the A-Team (Akonadi, not Amarok) gathered in KDAB's office in the heart of Berlin to push the Akonadi PIM storage database to the next level.

On Friday afternoon, after everybody arrived, the meeting started with a series of presentations to get everybody on the same page with respect to progress in various parts of Akonadi.

Computerworld covers progress in OpenChange, the Microsoft Exchange server and client replacement. He looks at integration work being done in Akonadi and how that will arrive in KDE 4.3. "Speaking at the Linux.conf.au conference in Hobart last week, Canberra-based OpenChange and KDE developer Brad Hards said 'We're working with the Microsoft Exchange protocols and work it mostly does.

This Sunday (8th June), the KDE Bugsquad will host a KDE PIM Krush day. The aim of the day will be to find and document as many of the bugs in the PIM applications (including KMail, Kontact, Akregator and many more) of the upcoming KDE 4.1 release as possible. The day will begin at 0:00 UTC on Sunday and continue until the day is over throughout the world. Krush Days are an excellent opportunity for KDE users keen to make their first contribution to the KDE project. You don't need to set aside a huge amount of time - as little as ten minutes will be enough to do some testing - nor do you need to have any programming experience. All you need is a recent version of KDE. KDE 4.1 Beta 1 will do, or a newer version from SVN. If you don't want to install KDE 4.1 on your system, then the Virtual Machine Image kde4daily is ideal. Just come along to #kde-bugs where the Bugsquad will help you get started. More information can be found on the Krush Day Techbase page.

Last weekend a group of developers gathered in Berlin at the KDAB office for an Akonadi sprint. The goal was simple, getting Akonadi in shape for the first public release of Akonadi when KDE 4.1 is released. In the couple of days they met, they made an amazing amount of 270 modifications to the KDE repository, and worked on average from 10am to 3am to make a big step into reaching that goal. Read on for details.

The KDE PIM crew met again at Osnabrück for three days of hacking, discussing and community building. The big topics were Akonadi and KDE 4.1. The team settled on the plan to release KDE PIM with KDE 4.1 based on the traditional backends and include the first platform release of Akonadi as the future base for PIM applications in and around KDE. The meeting was kindly hosted by Intevation and supported by the KDE e.V. and KDAB. Read on for a report or see the notes on the website.

...but now Blue-GNU is showing you the way with Kontact, in an article titled Stay In the Know With KDE's Kontact. The author says "I finally settled on Kontact to keep me in touch with the reality of my hectic daily schedule." Blue-GNU breaks down their use of each application integrated into Kontact, starting with KMail and then going through KAddressBook, KOrganizer, and KNotes. It concludes, "...Kontact is one of the best PIMs I've seen. I even prefer it to Outlook, which I used to prefer over the GNU/Linux tools in the past."

Last weekend was not only the time for the KMail Hacking Days but
also for the second Akonadi·
Hacking Meeting in Berlin, Germany. 7 KDE-PIM developers came together for 2 days at the KDAB offices in Berlin's Kreuzberg district and
continued to improve Akonadi, the personal information data storage for KDE 4. Meeting the other developers in real life and discussing issues face to face
always helps to find new solutions and implement crucial features in a short
period of time.

On Friday 14 January 2007, members of the KDE PIM developer group came together for the fifth year in a row in Osnabrück, Germany to review
the state of the project. Important topics including Akonadi, KDE PIM
maintenance and enterprise usage. A record number of attendees were welcomed
into the Intevation office and made at home by Bernhard Reiter, Jan-Oliver Wagner and the rest of the team.

Last weekend, a second bout of KDE bug triage took place in the #kde-bugs IRC channel on Freenode. This round was dedicated to the KDE PIM module, with key applications Kontact, KMail and KOrganizer.
All these applications have seen a drop in bug count, thanks to many people who joined the bug squad. During the weekend more than 180 bugs were confirmed, closed, some even fixed right away. That's a huge amount of bugs less to worry about for the KDE PIM developers.
But there's still plenty to be done! Read on to learn how.