Zotero is a Firefox browser plugin for keeping track of citations and is very useful in an academic environment. I’ve played with it from time to time and with each progressive version it is getting better and better. Apparently now its even good enought that, Thomson Reuters, makers of Endnote software, a commercial competitor of Zotero, has sued the Commonwealth of Virginia (George Mason University is where the core team developing Zotero is based) over Zotero being able to read Endnote files into the Zotero system. Yeah, if I were Endnote I’d be scared pantless that a startup which actually promotes and open standard is about to take away your market. And peoples, aren’t you happy that all of the value you’ve created in your citation databases in Endnote is effectively forever trapped inside that program. Makes you almost want to not use the Endnote software, doesn’t it. ENDnote?
O brave new quantum world!
I regret building up a database of my music track playing with last.fm, given that it will probably never be accessible to me and they suck at generating recommendations from it. Should be easy enough to write an in-between driver that logs to .txt, but more and more I get the feeling that everyone capable (like me) is busy with more important things. Where are the script kiddies these days? Ripping DVD’s?
I’ve read a couple of Michael Nielsen’s blog posts on open research, but the whole idea just seems so unworkable. Surely sites need some guarantee of data propriety to justify investment, just as scientists can’t be asked to give up their lives so some citizen can participate part time. [simplifying, I know].
Sometimes I guess the software is simple enough to be maintainable by the public, though. I’ll never understand where people get the time.
Oh, another point: each major journal having its own cite-ici.us = SUCK. Please, Nature, don’t even go there. You’re not benevolent enough to trust. It’s like, who would join a social network site run by Harvard. 😉