Zotero for Windows Mobile

steffenh · October 1, 2007

What if you don't have your Notebook at hand but your PDA? Is there a Zotero-Data-Format handling application for PDA's (Windows Mobile) or do you plan to offer one? It would be fine to use Zotero-Data on the beach and everywhere.

scot · October 2, 2007

I wasn't going to respond since I don't have any specific suggestions for you. But since no one else has jumped on board, here are a few ideas:

You might want to think about what you most want to do on your PDA. Zotero basically does the following (rougly): website/document capture, metadata capture, metadata entry and reference, reports, organization/tagging/annotation of database items, and note taking. Since a full version of Zotero on platform like WM is very ambitious (though I honestly have no specific knowledge of the situation), it might be worth specifying which of Zotero's tasks you might like doing on a PDA, and trying work for a way to do them. Notes is an obvious first choice, and Zotero imports and exports to a few text-based (ie non-binary formats) including its own XML/RDF format. If you can get your text-based notes from your PDA into Zotero's RDF format, you could import them. Or you could use one of those copy-from-PDA apps to transfer text manually and paste it into zotero's notes.

You could take HTML notes on a WM HTML-authoring app, and import them like any web page, and you can create a Zotero report and copy that to your device --in HTML or plain text format, or (best) turn it into an eBook-type document (readable with, say, Haali Reader or Vade Mecum). Of course none of these are a the slick syncable note-and -biblio database app which you are probably thinking of, but if you have specific uses in mind, you may be able to make them work.

I have not heard any specific plans to create any such apps, but Zotero is designed to make that kind of thing possible for third parties, so you might be able to encourage (or pay) someone to produce that kind of thing for you.

steffenh · October 3, 2007

Thanks for your ideas! I considered a simple literature-database program to fill in bibliographic data, notes and tags from books, newspaper etc. I picked in a library or a book shop. After docking my pda on my computer the programm should import these data in my zotero database and then make it possible to me to look for some further information (webpage etc.) in the internet to get a fullfeatured entry in my zotero database. But I think thats not an easy task. ;-). Maybe it is possible to update tools like Booklib (http://coderyder.starke-muegge.de/index.php/Home/Booklib) for that task?

svetlovska · September 19, 2009

I second Steffenh's comments - I can totally see the point of being able to grab biblio data from Amazon and some notes re. a book mentioned by a lecturer mid-lecture, shown me by a colleague, or to grab a line or two quotation from a source happened across whilst reading a magazine or paper on the train, without having to fire up my laptop per se, or going through some weary post-moment import process. I find I'm using Zotero & OneNote for grabbing virtually everything these days - it's getting so I don't like to read a book if I don't have the means at hand to capture anything useful from it nito Zotero (sad, I know!), so some kind of portable/mobile Zotero functionality (preferably compatible with browsers for Android, and yes, I am aware that Firefox has issues with that at present) would be a very great thing indeed - after all, the future is mobile!

Failing a full-on Zotero implementation though - could there be some sophisticated hooks into Zotero from third party mobile-only apps that could deliver biblio & notes painlessly to the main Zotero app on a routine sync, as Steffen describes? Or maybe an accessing of your Zotero synce'd 'cloud' data from any mobile browser? (So the heavy lifting is done at the Zotero storage/server end?) I'd be happy to pay a few dollars a month for the added security of cloud storage for my Zotero db anyway, and being able to run zotero, even remotely, from my phone would be a killer app for me. (I'm currently using dropbox for the same purpose.)Just a thought...

retroscope · March 15, 2010

I too would like to have zotero on my mobile phone. I run zotero mainly from firefox portable. I have a medium-sized collection of webpages, documents and pdfs. Most of them come from pubmed and have abstracts and other metadata like tags loaded as well.

Since zotero depends on firefox, I would like to be able to run firefox on windows mobile. Then use zotero to quickly search publications by tags, browse the abstracts and incidentally view the entire pdf as well. Too often a paper is discussed and I would like to check some of it instantly. Now I use pubmed to search by year/author etc. and retrieve an abstract or check the paper at a later time. But with zotero I can search/select by (custom) tags and don't need to be online.

My thought are that as soon as firefox runs on windows mobile it might all be possible. Assuming that the firefox mobile version will support the zotero plugin.

anders_royce · March 15, 2010

That's a good question. Before my Touch Pro broke, I was using the beta of Fennec (or whatever they are calling Firefox mobile these days), and it had pretty decent addons in various stages of development. However, there was not much in the way of toolbars etc. (The UI has no place for it). I don't know if a full fledged Zotero addon for FF mobile would be feasible, but a button to add the current page to your Zotero library seems like it might be possible. It's definitely something I hope the Zotero folks, or another motivated developer, will look into. As far as browsing one's library, I think that will probably be best done with improvements to the website's capabilities.