Update (30/09/11):  Unfortunately we’ve had a small number of users report a connectivity issue with the Mendeley Desktop v1.1 release on some Windows systems which we did not encounter during testing.  Our developers are working hard on a reliable solution to bring you the best experience possible. A Mendeley Desktop v1.1.1 release resolving the issue will be rolled out sometime in the next few days.  Until then, we’ve removed the v1.1 download from our servers, and encourage you to use the previous Mendeley Desktop v1.0.1 release instead.  We apologize to those of you affected – we will release the fix asap.  Thanks for your patience.

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Mendeley 1.1 is now available. There are several notable improvements to the citation insertion functionality, as well as significant under-the-hood bugfixes and speed + appearance tweaks. You can read the full release notes here.

Highlights

• Mendeley now peacefully co-exists with Track Changes in MS Word.
• Inserting citations and refreshing the document is much faster.
• Watched folders now work much better on the Mac
• Check for Duplicates decisions are now persistent

Interface tweaks include better performance of web content in the desktop client and smaller download/update sizes. Many old UI issues have also been resolved.

Please download and update to Mendeley 1.1 now.

The Open Science Summit brings together researchers, life science industry professionals, students, patients and other stakeholders to discuss the future of collaborative science and innovation. This year features in depth sessions on new models for drug discovery and clinical trials, personal genomics, the patent system, the future of scientific publications, and more. I went last year and made some good friends and learned a lot, so I would definitely recommend it to anyone involved in scientific research.

What: Open Science Summit When: Saturday and Sunday, October 22-23rd 2011 Where: Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA

p.s. All attendees get a special thank you gift from Mendeley, and there will also be some fun extracurricular activities, so don’t miss this.

One of the big reasons we created the Open APIs into Mendeley data was because we knew we’d never have the time or resources to create everything that you want and we want. Having Mendeley on mobile devices is obviously a big need. That’s why it is great to see third party developers take our APIs and build either full out Mendeley clients, or tiny apps that perform a specific task on a mobile device. Some developers have also tapped into the local storage to build apps. In no particular order then, here are several apps that you can start using on Android enabled devices: (more…)

As the Fall semester starts, librarians get really busy and it’s sometimes hard to find the time to keep updated on the latest technologies. We understand. Give us 40 minutes of your time on the 29th and we’ll give you a quick primer on what you need to know to answer any questions that arise. (more…)

Mendeley Desktop 1.1-dev4 is now available for testing.  The main changes from the previous preview are:

• The Word plugins can now be used alongside the ‘Track Changes’ feature in Word.

If you are using 1.1-dev1, you can update to dev4 by starting Mendeley and accepting the auto-update prompt.

If you are using a stable version of Mendeley, you can get the preview release from the downloads page.

In addition:

• Auto-updates are now smaller
• A number of bugs affecting the interoperability of Word documents containing citations added using the Zotero 3.0 Beta have been fixed.
• Better handling of corrupted citation fields in Microsoft Word
• Fixed a problem with the Microsoft Word plugin not appearing in the Script menu after installation under Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard)
• Mendeley no longer follows shortcuts or symlinks to other folders when searching for PDFs using the ‘Watched Folders’ or ‘Add Folder’ tool.
• Fixed a bug that could result in folders not being restored properly after restoring a backup.

Known issues in this preview:

• Mendeley Desktop may not start automatically after updating from 1.1-dev1 on older Windows systems.  You will need to restart it manually.

For a full list of changes in 1.1, please see the release notes page.

We have updated the citation styles available in Mendeley Desktop from the main repository for CSL styles.  This adds 514 new citation styles and includes updates to many others.  You can browse and update styles from within Mendeley Desktop by going to View -> Citation Style -> More Styles.  Updated styles will have a blue ‘Update Available‘ label next to them. Click on the style and then click ‘Update Now‘ to install the updated citation style.

If you have developed new citation styles and you want to make them available to Mendeley users, please submit them to the CSL repository.

If you’re like most professors I know, you’d like to keep up with technology, but you just don’t have the time to sit down and spend a few hours learning how to use a new application. We understand. Give us 40 minutes of your time on the 19th and we’ll get you up and running, so you can enjoy the productivity enhancement with minimal time investment. (more…)