Month: August 2011

Mendeley Desktop 1.1 Preview

Robert Knight4 Comments

A preview release of Mendeley Desktop 1.1 is available.  This release includes several performance improvements in the Microsoft Word plugins alongside a number of stability and usability enhancements.

You can download the preview from the right-hand side of the downloads page.

You can give us feedback on this release in the feedback forum, the comments in this post or via our support form.

Improvements
  • Improved the performance of inserting citations and refreshing documents using the Word plugins (these mostly benefit the Microsoft Word for Windows plugin, but there have also been improvements to the Mac Word plugin).
  • Pressing the ‘Delete’ key now removes the selected document from the current collection, instead of moving it to the trash. Pressing Shift+Delete moves the document to the trash and Ctrl+Shift+Delete removes it completely.
  • Folders in the left-hand pane are now collapsed on startup.
  • When a pair of documents are marked as not being duplicates in the ‘Check for Duplicates’ tool, that decision is remembered on the computer on which it was made.
Bug Fixes
  • Fixed a problem which could allow multiple copies of Mendeley to run at once.
  • Fixed Bibtex sync not updating the corresponding Bibtex files when documents are added to or removed from folders.
  • (Mac) Reduced watched folders resource usage and fixed crash when watching a folder containing a large number of sub-folders.
  • (Windows) Fixed Mendeley not being able to close Word automatically when needed on 64bit Windows.

Compatibility

  • There are no compatibility changes from the previous release.  In the event of problems with the 1.1 preview, you can revert back to 1.0.

What the scientific community wants computers to do for them: The results of the PLoS and Mendeley Call for Apps

drgunn1 Comment

A little over a week ago, PLoS and Mendeley got together to issue a “Call for Apps” to the scientific community. We have now collected some really great ideas which we’d like to pass along to the developer community. Some of the ideas are Binary Battle-ready, while others are just kinda cool, so take a look at the list and see if anything inspires you.

Some interesting Binary Battle-ready ideas are:Read More »

Organization without aggravation: Quick tips for managing your research library

drgunn4 Comments

All research projects involve two types of activity; work that generates novel information that makes a positive contribution to the world’s store of knowledge and notifying the world about said novel discovery. In the future, researchers will be able to keep working away at the first kind of activity and intelligent agents will follow behind them collecting that information, adding context and provenance, and streaming it to the worldwide knowledge collective. Today, researchers have to do this part themselves and I don’t think I’m overgeneralizing when I say it’s one of the least favorite parts of the research life. Short of the “generating great ideas for you” feature that’s coming in the next release (ahem), it’s the area that we at Mendeley can most effectively target to make research more efficient. I’m going to share with you a couple quick tips to take some of the aggravation and administrative overhead out of organization.Read More »

Want to hear about the latest trends in research? Please join us on August 16th at 2PM EDT for Mendeley for Journalists

drgunn

Calling all journalists and news industry professionals! Come learn about how researchers are using Mendeley and how you can use it to discover research trends and quickly get an understanding of the latest scientific ideas. We’ll discuss topics such as:

  • Organizing a research library
  • Discovering scientific research
  • Enhancing your content
  • Expanding and tracking readership
  • Engaging with researchers and other journalists

Mike Blank, Business Development at Mendeley, will be conducting this session. There will be plenty of time for questions after and during the session. If this time doesn’t work for you, please check out the session schedule in this post or see our events page for an event near you.Read More »

Remembering John Venn, famous British logician, biographer, and maker of diagrams.

drgunn

Venn Diagram Born 1834 in Yorkshire, John Venn was the 8th Venn to have a college education, mostly because his family held a pretty high status in the Christian church. As you probably know, until relatively recently, higher education was mostly a function of the church. As such, he probably enjoyed quite a few privileges and opportunities that the common man didn’t have access to at the time. One can only wonder what Venn would have thought of the way the world is today, where the stereotypical liberal college professor is agnostic, at best. Would he be thrilled at the trend towards opening access and democratizing research, or would be be horrified at the secular “barbarians at the gates”?

Whatever the case, we’re thrilled he formulated his theory of symbolic logic, as we can now use the concept of a Venn diagram to explain concepts such as:Read More »

Tell us about your ideal science app & we'll get someone to build it.

drgunn15 Comments

Research is hard enough without having to deal with crappy software and programs that don’t talk to one another. Part of the problem is that many people who write great code aren’t scientists, so they don’t know what scientists need. We’d like to solve that problem, so we’ve teamed up with the Public Library of Science to issue a “Call for Apps“.

If you have a great idea for a scientific app but lack the coding skills to develop it, you’re in luck! Submit your app idea by August 10th (12pm PDT) and we’ll present it to developers who have the skills to make your dream a reality using the PLoS and Mendeley APIs, which are rich sources of data on scientific trends and stats.

Here are some ideas:

What’s the thing you wish someone would make an app for? We’ve got the data, you’ve got the idea, and chances are there’s someone who wants to bring your idea to life, if they only knew what you needed.

How To Submit Your App Idea:

  • Complete the Binary Battle App Idea Submission form
  • Leave a comment on this blog post with your ideas
  • or just tweet your idea using the #binarybattle hashtag

If you’re a developer, you may wish to enter your completed app in the Binary Battle.