Zotero is a bibliography tool for Firefox. Ordinarily, I would not do two tool reviews in a week but this is a very useful tool for citations.
In Zotero, a person can save annotations in various forms for both online and offline use. You can import and export libraries of citations to Zotero, create standard citations for book, book sections,documents, journal and magazine articles,and many more citation forms including podcasts. There is the ability to create new items from the current page as well as saving a link to a current page. There are also standalone notes that one can write.
Let's take Zotero for a spin. I decided to note a wikipedia article about Alan Rickman. I clicked on the Zotero icon in my browser and the interface for the tool popped up. Next, I clicked on the Save Link to Current Page. This gave me an interface that saved the link and also timestamped it. Underneath the timestamp is a blank white area to make a note. I wrote "This is an article about the handsome actor Alan Rickman, second only to the late Jeremy Brett as one of the greatest British actors." (Note: You can copy or cut, then paste from Zotero to Blogger or anything else like e-mail). Next there is a Related link that shows what might be related in one's library and a tagging function. Zotero saves not only the citation but when you open Zotero again, you can click on the web link and go directly to the cited article.
Right-clicking on an item brings up several more options to create a bibliography in various formats such as IEEE, Chicago, Vancouver et cetera. This can be exported to RTF, HTML, Printed, or to the computer's Clipboard. Zotero also can generate a report in the browser if you choose to click the option Generate Report. Zotero can be added as a plugin in some versions of Open Office and in Microsoft Word. Check the compatibility table for more information.
This is definitely a tool that is necessary for Firefox. Be sure to add it to your browser.
Leafletter is a tool that you should avoid. Basically, it is a tool for placing small websites into blogs and social sites. The application did not work in Blogger. The application had scripting errors and crashed my browser (Firefox). Technorati Tags: blogging tools
I read that Ray Ozzie has called Google "the command line of the Internet" in comparison to Microsoft's Live.com. As a reviewer of tools for writers,I decided to take each for a spin.
Using the key word "fairy", Google came up with 31,200,000 entries for a search and 718,000 for images with a strict safe search. Live.com came up with 16,536,053 results in search and 510,604 in images. In terms of flexibility, Google has easier search perimeters if one wants to search for black and white, or colour, or grayscale images. Live.com does not have the same focused search. Furthermore, Live.com has a scrolling bar that is clunky to use. There is a feature of dragging and saving to a scratch board but I usually save the images to my hard drive and use Picasa web albums or copy and e-mail the images.
In Live.com results for fairy related books, I obtained 9,353 results. In Google,3073. I still had to deal with the scrolling bar which is annoying.
In the final analysis, Google gets the thumbs up. For Live.com:Ctrl, Alt, Delete.
My soul is awakened, my spirit is soaring And carried aloft on the wings of the breeze; For above and around me the wild wind is roaring, Arousing to rapture the earth and the seas. The long withered grass in the sunshine is glancing, The bare trees are tossing their branches on high; The dead leaves, beneath them, are merrily dancing, The white clouds are scudding across the blue sky.
I wish I could see how the ocean is lashing The foam of its billows to whirlwinds of spray; I wish I could see how its proud waves are dashing, And hear the wild roar of their thunder today!
This is one of the organizations necessary to our survival as writers. We may write but the words are in limbo if no one may read our novels, our essays, our poetry, or our plays.
Zotero is a bibliography tool for Firefox. Ordinarily, I would not do two tool reviews in a week but this is a very useful tool for citations.
