Month: July 2010

Our first iPhone app has Arrived!

Ian Mulvany34 Comments

I’m thrilled to announce that we have launched our first iPhone app, and it’s free Yay!  You can head over to the app store and grab it here. This is our first app for the iPhone, and we have decided to start with a free ‘lite’ version app so that you can get the benefits right now of being able to read your papers on the go.  With that said let’s take a quick tour of the new app !

In order to use the app you will need to sign up for an account with Mendeley.  You can get build up your digital library either through the web or by using the free desktop client.  Once you have created an online digital library you can then sync that library to the iPhone app.  In order to get the sync to work you just need to install the app via iTunes, and fire it up.  You will be asked to sign in to your Mendeley account and as soon as you login the app will sync your library’s metadata.  You will be able to see all of your collections, your list of favourites, your recent items and also any shared collections that you are a member of.

Once you have your library in your pocket your can search within your collections.  In addition you can also share a citation for any item in your library via email. If you have the Pdf of a paper in your library, then there will be a ‘download’ icon to the left of the paper. You can download the Pdf straight to your device, and from there you can read it any time you like when you are offline.

You can also share the citation of a paper via email, straight from within the app.

Obviously at the moment the biggest limitation with the new app is that you can’t edit any of the metadata for your papers, but don’t worry, we will be releasing a full version of  Mendeley for iPhone in the near future, and we are also working hard on an iPad version too.  We think Mendeley is perfect for the iPad and we want to make sure that you have the best experience available for managing the information that is important to you.  We are really keen to get feedback on the app that we are releasing today so that we can make some rapid improvements.  We really hope that you enjoy the Lite version!

Scheduled downtime on Tuesday for some of Mendeley Web

Paul Foeckler2 Comments

[UPDATE 2:42pm: all services are back up and running as usual.]

The growth in researchers discovering and using Mendeley continues to humble us. We have outgrown what our current data center can provide, so now we are expanding into a new one. Unfortunately, this means that some services will be put on hold while we make these upgrades.

Services that may experience downtime starting at 1:30 am PST (9:30 am BST) on Tuesday, July 13 are search and article pages. We anticipate that these will be unavailable for two to six hours.

Client syncs or uploading metadata to Mendeley will NOT be affected during this upgrade.

From all of us, thank you for using Mendeley and changing how research is done.

Paul Foeckler | Co-founder and CTO

Mendeley University Advisor applications pouring in…

Ricardo Vidal

Mendeley University AdvisorWoooaah! Since we started up our University Advisor program a couple weeks ago, we have been receiving a flood of applications from across the globe.

We are extremely humbled by the sheer number of researchers, professors and students that have shown their interest in spreading the word at their hosting institutions.

We are currently working through the long list of applicants as fast as we can. If you’ve applied to become a university advisor and have not yet heard from us, do not despair. We get back to everyone that has applied.

As we work hard to get things moving along smoothly and streamlined, we will keep our application form open. There’s still time to claim your spot. Apply to represent your institution.

Drum rolls… and the winner is Mendeley! #Activate2010

Miji Choi2 Comments

We believe that we will change the world for the better. Yup, this exciting and glorious ambition is what keeps us going. But we also realize that we are not the only one sweating to make it happen. That’s exactly why it is such an honor to have placed first at the Guardian Activate Future Technologies Pitching Contest.

A panel of judges including Esther Dyson, Anil Hansjee, Stephen King, and George Coelho asked themselves, “which company is most likely to change the world for the better?” and the answer was Mendeley! Also today, Victor – alongside Google CEO Eric Schmidt and US Deputy Chief Technology Officer & Director of White House Open Government Initiative Beth Simone Noveck – gave a presentation at the Guardian Activate 2010 Summit.

Thank you everyone for supporting us (and yes, keep sending us your feedback)! Being recognized feels great and what we love even more is that a win like this allows us more opportunities to speak up about our progress and vision.

Speaking of progress, we reached just over 400,000 users and are approaching 30M research papers in our users’ libraries as of yesterday.

Now let the saga continue…

Academia-bound information management tools are not a new thing. But never have they been as widely or excitedly welcomed. Odd, it seems, for an industry ripe for collaboration. The enthusiasm is, in large part, due to Mendeley’s ease of use – but its longevity lies in the long-tail data that can be unearthed about who’s reading what, when and why.

– “Mendeley ‘most likely to change the world for the better'” by Josh Halliday, The Guardian