Zotero.org

To say goodbye to 2007, a little post on zotero. Oh, and a pledge for more frequent posting next year…

I have seen zotero.org before. I just read an article on washingtonpost.com which reminded me of it (Internet Access is Only Prerequisite for More and More College Classes) and I thought I would look at zotero again.

Zotero is a Firefox extension built to help scholars organize their documents, research, bibliographic information, and notes. It is a creation of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University; see zotero.org for all the info, and to download it. Don’t miss the video clips in the Quick Start Guide page.
There are such programs for various operating systems already. For instance, I have DEVONThink on the Mac, and in the past have used a shareware”knowledge-base” program on Windows. But because zotero runs on Firefox, I can use it on my Ubuntu Linux-running laptop and my Mac and on whatever new computer comes along. I’m looking forward to getting to know zotero better in the weeks to come.

Bog/blook?

This is very interesting. Be sure to follow the links given, especially to the if:book site. It’s about a way to make the reading of a whole book, and annotating it, a web experience. Fascinating, once we really get used to the idea of reading scads of text on screen (I’m pretty used to it already, which I did not think I would be just a few years ago).

Free graphic design programs

Link found via lifehacker.com. Good stuff.

A few great software applications I use

All of these are Free/Open Source Software, all run on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. I’ve used them all, on some or all three of these operating systems. Follow the links to download; they are all free (but welcome donations).

Openoffice.org (yes, that’s the name) General office application, with a word processor, spreadsheet, presentations, drawing, mathematical equation editor, database.

LyX, a document processor, which is a WYSIWYM application (What You See Is What You Mean). Uses LaTeX in the background to typeset documents beautifully. Excels for long documents, or documents with many mathematical formulas. I am going to have my undergraduate students in the Mathematical Economics course use it for homework assignments this semester; I’m hoping that my assistant and I will not be too inundated with requests for help from the students.

The GIMP (don’t ask; the site explains the weird name). Great free photo/graphics manipulation application. Try the GIMPShop for an alternative interface that many people prefer.

More in a later post.