I spend most of the week sitting in an office filled with papers and computers. It’s not as depressing as that sentence made it sound, but looking around, it doesn’t evoke any sort of environmentally friendly feelings. The computers are a lost cause. I’ve already been told I can’t turn them off while I am away because then I will miss crucial software and anti-virus updates. Hmmm. But the papers–here is something I can do something about. I have two filing cabinets that could easily squash me like the witch from The Wizard of Oz if they toppled in an earthquake…we have a lot of earthquakes in New Zealand, so this is a very real concern.
Enter Sente. I downloaded the free trial version over the weekend. So far so good. My pdf files are stored within it and are easy to access and read, and I can take notes alongside them. No more printing journal articles! And since it can store webpages and a local copy, I don’t need to keep paper records for the blogs I’m studying. I don’t want to sound like an advertisement for Sente, but it really has made my life easier. Ease of use aside, it might become even more important if the creators of Zotero (which I also rely on) have to close up shop because of the recent lawsuit against them. Now that I’m not killing as many trees I need to figure out how to minimise the electricity the computers use. The quest for a sustainable PhD continues…
In other news, via Hard News: this is interesting. If Economist readers around the world voted for the US Presidential election, even with the electoral college format, Obama wins in a landslide.
[...] Shame on Endnote. Long live Zotero. October 8, 2008, 4:05 pm Filed under: Uncategorized Mary at pickingupsticks.wordpress.com writes that the makers of Endnote have filed suit against Zotero, [...]
I think it is pretty unlikely that Zotero will “have to close up shop.” Many of the claims in the suit are false. Thomson wants $$$ and for the removal of one feature, but have not called for halting production of the program.
Further, commercial Sente may be a better target for lawsuits ($$$) than free/open source zotero. To paraphrase: fighting free/open source software in court is like boxing a wasp’s nest.
Rick, I completely agree with you re Zotero having to close up shop. I don’t think it will happen, but the the fact that the Zotero folk will have to divert energy into fighting a lawsuit when they could be adding more features to their product irks me. It seems a waste of time, for Zotero in terms of wasted energy/money, and for Thomson/Reuters because all they will end up with in the end is a lot of bad press.