Zotero 1.5 Beta Released. The sharing features are here, and also getting meta data from existing pdfs
February 28th, 2009 by joseThis is an exciting release.
In a single stroke, Zotero may have added the most important feature of online apps such as citeUlike (collaboration) and the best feature of Mendeley (metadata extraction). I have no idea how well these work, as I have just moved to zotero recently and don’t want to risk trying the beta this soon, but if they work well, this is a quantum leap.
Here’s a list of the new features:
- Automatic synchronization of collections across multiple computers. For example, sync your PC at work with your Mac laptop and your Linux desktop at home.
- Free automatic backup of your library data at Zotero.org.
- Automatic synchronization of your attachment files to a server of your choice (e.g. iDisk, Jungle Disk, or university-provided web storage).
- Recover recently deleted items with Zotero’s trash can.
- Rich-text notes
- New style manager allowing you to add and delete CSLs and legacy style formats
- Automatic detection of PDF metadata (author, title, etc.)
- Automatic detection and support for proxy servers
New Website Features
- Browse through your library online.
- New user profiles tied to Zotero accounts.
- Preliminary support for following other Zotero users: In the future this will generate a twitter-like feed of users public research activity.
- WYSIWYG CV creator, with the ability to dynamically generate all or part of your CV from Zotero collections.
- Search for friends, colleagues, and other users by institutional affiliation, username, email address, or field of interest.
I’ve been using endNote for about 6 years now, so I have experience a hard case of vendor lock-in (I have plenty of text with references in the endNote format. This is giving me a really bad feeling about endNote makers, and the money I have invested in a clearly inferior product doesn’t make me happy either. Suing Zotero was the last drop. I finally moved to Zotero out of principle. What I find funny is that zotero uses less memory with the same database size, even building on top of Firefox. And Word integration is as good, if not better, than endNote’s.
February 28th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
What they need now, is a bookmarklet so that I can add references to my collection when not at home (where I cannot install zotero).
March 2nd, 2009 at 3:54 pm
Zotero adds features I’ve been looking for in newest beta via Academic Productivity…
I’ve been trying out Mendeley for PDF management and to a lesser extent bibliography management for the past couple of weeks to see how I like it. I’m looking for something for our lab group to use as a centralized bibliography tool. This…
March 2nd, 2009 at 5:42 pm
[...] Zotero 1.5 Beta Released. The sharing features are here, and also getting meta data from existing pd… (academicproductivity.com) [...]
March 10th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Vincent – can you use firefox/zotero on a USB stick if you’re not at home?
April 10th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Zotero adds features I’ve been looking for in newest beta via Academic Productivity.
June 3rd, 2009 at 4:00 am
I have tried Mendeley. I think it is not bad, but their bookmarklet is not that intuitive and responsive. The sharing and grouping is pretty good though.
Anyway, I have recently tried this new reference management called WizFolio, and it is surprisingly good. Their bookmarking is very simple and efficient, and their collaboration for citation is good. I think you guys should go give it a try. Think it is a RMS worth a try.
June 3rd, 2009 at 3:07 pm
[...] It should be no surprise that many of us love Zotero, especially since they added support for reference sharing and synchronization. [...]
July 17th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
[...] Zotero 1.5 Beta Released. The sharing features are here, and also getting meta data from existing pd… (academicproductivity.com) [...]