This is the third in a series of interviews about open source multimedia, the previous interviews were about Jokosher and Totem. For this interview we check in with Sjoerd Simons who works on the Empathy client, an which combines instant messaging, video conferencing and voice over IP into one application. Sjoerd will talk to us about the current status of Empathy and where it is going.

In this review I've taken a look at OpenOffice.org's most recent release, along with the commercially-supported StarOffice from Sun,IBM (NYSE: IBM)'s reworking of OO.o as Lotus Symphony, the KOffice suite for Linux, and the minimal but still useful AbiWord. Talking about how these would entirely replace Microsoft Office would be misleading, since not everyone might be doing that -- so I've looked at each product as far on its own merits as possible.

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I recently installed new version of linux (Ubuntu Intrepid ibex) on my secondary computer and i wanted to customize it like i am used to customize windows. I tried a lot of gnome themes and found many beautiful and elegant looking themes which enhance your desktop with different colors, corners, buttons and scroll bar styles. I filtered some of the best looking gnome themes to share on TechieSouls. After downloading themes you have to install them, the following screenshot will guide you how to install theme in ubuntu and gnome interface. Install apply and enjoy

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This is the second in a series of of interviews about Linux Multimedia. The previous interview was with Laszlo Pandy about Jokosher. This time we check in with Bastien Nocera of the Totem media player. In addition to Totem Bastien has worked on range of multimedia related projects and is someone who knows the challenges of multimedia from a range of different angles. In this interview we talk about his work on Totem and the other major contributions he has done to free software multimedia and where he sees things heading from here.

GSQL is an integrated database development environment for GNOME.
It is designed to support multiple database engines, so far MySQL and
Oracle are supported.

This release introduces:

• SQL editor  
• PL /SQL editor (in triggers, functions, procedures and packages)
  accessible in Oracle engine. 

• tree-like database object navigation 
• using standard notification service for pop up messages. E. g.
  in case of inactivity user will be notified on query completion
   

• create and connect to a duplicate session with parameters copied
  from the active session, all in one click

In this first in what I hope will be a series of interviews about linux multimedia I talk with Laszlo Pandy, the leading force behind audio editing application Jokosher. In addition to talking about Jokosher itself and Laszlo's involvement we also will talk about the general state of Linux multimedia.

Today, the GNOME Project celebrates the release of GNOME 2.24, the
latest version of the popular, multi-platform free desktop
environment and of its developer platform. Released on schedule, to the
day, GNOME 2.24 builds on top of a long series of successful six months
releases to offer the best experience to users and developers.

For more than 10 years now, the project has been seeing a tremendous
amount of work. And as usual, it's hard to come back to a previous
version of GNOME once you've tried GNOME 2.24, which is probably the
best compliment the project can receive.

This six months effort wouldn't have been possible without the whole
GNOME community, made of contributors from all around the world:
hackers, documentors, usability and accessibility specialists,
translators, maintainers, sysadmins, companies, artists, users and
testers. GNOME would not exist without all those people. Thanks very
much to every one of them!

You'll find detailed information about GNOME 2.24 in our release notes:

http://library.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/2.24/

Here's the first release after GUADEC. Istanbul. It was a great place.
And some people actually had time to visit the beautiful city. Or to
take a turkish bath. Sounds like a cool program, doesn't it? Of course,
it was not only about this -- there were tons of interesting
discussions, lots of sessions around various topics, etc. But you know
what? The GNOME contributors actually managed to continue hacking on
their modules. Amazing. Those people never stop. I guess it shows how
passionate they are! So they made changes that are now visible in this
latest version of GNOME. And if you look closely, you can feel some
turkish love in the air around this release! Cool stuff.

The GNOME SlackBuild GNOME 2.22.1 Desktop is now available for users of the latest Slackware 12.1 release! There have been a lot of improvements in this latest GSB release, including the move to PulseAudio, fewer package replacements, a GNOME-integrated Compiz-Fusion setup, the latest NetworkManager, Abiword 2.6, and OpenOffice2.4, a richer Mono C# suite, as well as all the great features of GNOME 2.22.

For those users new to GSB, head over to the Download page which has full instructions on how to download, install and configure GSB GNOME 2.22.1. For users who want to upgrade their current version of GSB, please check out the What's New page to find information on what needs to be done for a smooth upgrade, and information about what has changed in this release of GNOME SlackBuild.

The boards of KDE e.V. and the GNOME Foundation have issued a call to co-host Akademy and GUADEC, the flagship conferences of the KDE and GNOME projects respectively, during the Summer of 2009.

This would be the first time that the conferences are to be co-hosted. The combined conference is expected to have around 800 attendees, being one of the biggest meetings of free software developers in the world.

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Next week the members of the GNOME Mobile initiative will descend on Austin for the 3rd GNOME Mobile summit, which will be held as part of the Linux Foundation collaboration summit. On the agenda are the creation of a roadmap for the initiative, and encouraging industry participants to collaborate in the community on projects of joint interest.

For more information, see the foundation press release.

The Libre Graphics Meeting gathers developers and users of free software graphics applications together every year. The conference, now in its 3rd edition, has become hugely important to the volunteer developers of the projects involved. It has led to increased co-operation between projects, and has resulted in improvement on features like inter-application drag & drop, colour management and resource sharing.

This year, the organisers need your help. They have just launched a campaign to raise $20,000 in two weeks to help cover the travel costs of people who could not otherwise attend the conference. You can also help by embedding a badge to increase awareness of the campaign in your website.

GNOME 2.22 has been released, bringing a whole ream of new apps, features and improvements to GNOME users.

Among the most significant additions in this release are the addition of a photo and video taking application that integrates with your webcam called Cheese, a new VNC viewer called Vinagre and the addition of an advanced and integrated IDE, Anjuta.

Notable improvements are the improved support for DVD playback, subtitles and VLC support in the Totem video player, an improved international clock applet, Google calendar integration in Evolution, improved accessibility for web apps and a whole new library to support networked file-systems.

The second annual report of the GNOME Foundation is available for download (1860 KB, PDF) now. The report aims to bring a summary of GNOME community activities in 2007. It includes a review of the year, accounts of various community activities and events around the world, and foundation development actions during the year.

The GNOME Foundation and the Mozilla Foundation will increase their collaboration to improve developer support and user experience. As part of this partnership, the Mozilla Foundation joins the GNOME Foundation advisory board and announces a grant of $10,000 to be spent on the improvement of accessibility.
Read the announcement for more information.