Research+ w/ Zotero & Jungledisk

Sometimes waiting a while is the best option. I didn't wait, I started to write my own pdf-manager but never really finished it. The goal was to keep track of all my research sources (read online papers in pdf form) with copies available offline whenever possible. Additionally, I wanted to keep notes on these resources as I read this. All bundled together, instead of notes and actual pdf's flying all over the place.

How I designed my to-be manager and what fate it met is a story for another day. Fast forward 3-4 months and find me falling back to Zotero. Why? Because now it's version 2.0. They have an excellent demo video on zotero.org, so I won't detail it here. The thing to note, though, is that I came back to it because they added a server-sync functionality in 2.0. All I needed, now, was a WebDAV server storage, which Jungledisk provides off the Amazon S3 storage for $2/month + 15c/GB-month - peanuts. WebDAV is just a protocol on top of http for generic storage access. Again, jungledisk.com is very intuitive and works right out-of-the-box. (No, I don't use Windows or Mac).

Conclusion: Firefox + Zotero plugin + Jungledisk a/c make it a breeze to keep track of your resources from anywhere, anytime. It's worth your time exploring these.

Caveat: It may not be possible to include your existing resources into the Zotero library. If you think of your research resources/projects as music albums, just switch to Zotero from your next album.