Nerdlets » Software

Make Your Zotero Collections Recursive

Tommy — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:30:29 +0000

Do you use Zotero? Do you wish that your folder collections showed all the items in their various subfolders? I do. And there is a hidden setting in Zotero to allow you to change the behavior.

Here’s the official explanation:

By default, each of your collections displays only the items you have placed there. When you place a collection inside another collection, the contents of the second collection are not added to the first. If you enable recursive collections, items from subcollections will appear in all higher-level collections.

To change this behavior, type the following into your Firefox URL bar:

about:config

Be careful when you are on this special page. Firefox stores all of its settings here, and you can really mess things up if you go poking around without knowing what you are doing.

In the “filter” bar at the top of the page type:

zotero.recursive

You should see a line pop up that says:

extensions.zotero.recursiveCollections

Set the “value” of this setting to “true,” which you can do by double-clicking the line.

Now your folders are recursive! You can find other “hidden” settings, and what they do, here.

Logos 4 Ready to Roll

Tommy — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:04:21 +0000

I don’t use the software and so cannot comment on it personally, but Mike Aubrey has a thorough review of the new version of the always well-received Logos platform of bible study tools Check it out. I have been particularly interested in the sentence flow diagramming feature of the platform. Someday I will be able to try it out, but those who are already using Logos should comment on your experiences below!

No related posts.

Get Real Text out of your Scanned Documents

Tommy — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:52:38 +0000

: Image via CrunchBase

OCR is the technology used to turn an image of text into plain (editable, search-able) text. If you’re like me (i.e., a nerd) you probably have a pile of scanned journal articles and books and such meticulously sorted on your hard drive (PDFs for example). You can read them and print them, but you can’t search them or edit them. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could?

Well, there are a number of free options on the web, but they all have their problems. Google has some of the best OCR technology out there–they recently acquired CAPTCHA to make it even better–and they have apparently been rolling this out into Google Docs. The Google Docs version is not as wonderful as you might like, but it works on high-res documents. Read about how to turn your images into text here.

Update: I was not able to get this to work with PDFs, surprisingly. The web-app only accepts PNG, JPEG, or GIF images right now. That is unfortunate, and I assume will be “corrected” in the future. Has anyone tried this on an image yet?

Google and the Web OS

Tommy — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 13:09:11 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

We’ve commented on this before at Nerdlets, but now there is a definitive reason for doing so. It’s not really a surprise, but Google is about to tie all its seemingly disparate services together. Introducing the Google Operating System. Why a new operating system? Well, we use our computers differently now. We use them to access the web. Your browser, by and large, is your OS (at least according to Google), which is why Google has recently invested so much time into their entry into the browser wars: Google Chrome.

And the Google OS is actually the Google Chrome OS. According to Google, it is little more than a (Linux!) wrapper around Google’s browser. There is therefore no need to download, install, or develop applications. According to the official Google Blog post:

For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

There are advantages to this approach. Developers can spend their time programming applications that work on any Computer, and because users do not have to install, update, tweak, or otherwise fuss with their applications, developers can pump out updates quickly and efficiently. Furthermore, provided your browser is secure, you need not worry too much about viruses and malware, or at least not yet. And, of course, since all your data is on the web, you can access your files anywhere! Finally, since Google promises that it’s vision will remain Open Source focused, you (presumably) will not need to worry about Google hijacking your data. If Google does something you don’t like, you can just switch.

There are serious disadvantages as well. Your data is on a server somewhere, and not on your computer. There is also a certain amount of loss of control.

Windows, Linux, and OSX take a hybrid approach to the OS and browser relationship, and I prefer that personally. With the mainstream operating systems your data resides primarily on your computer, but is synced to the web at your request. This is what I practice, since I don’t always have an Internet connection.

So what do you fine folks think? Is the future of computing web-based services running in your browser, or is it something more like what we’re doing now? Your comments are welcome!

Update: Some excellent analysis by Louis Gray.

Firefox 3.5 is Faster, Slicker, and Ready to Download

Tommy — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:45:25 +0000

The latest version of Firefox is ready for download, and it will be worth the time.

There is a lot to love about the new release, but perhaps the most important improvement is speed. Speed matters now more than ever. We’re not talking about download speeds here, but more important things like application speed—how fast your browser can process Flash videos, or javascript applications. Why does this matter to you? Because most of the websites you browse every day, like Facebook or Hulu, use a lot of programming technologies that your browser has to process. Since we are all doing more and more computing tasks online, like reading email, updating our facebook accounts, or watching movies, browser speed takes on a whole new meaning, and Firefox 3.5 is noticeably faster.

There are a whole host of other important updates, which you can read about here.

You can download the latest version here.

Zotero 2.0 Launches (What a Pleasant Surprise!)

Tommy — Fri, 15 May 2009 00:24:45 +0000

Get the latest from Zotero

Zotero has just released the beta of their 2.0 upgrade, and it looks awesome. Here is the announcement.

The most important upgrade is the promised addition of groups and collaboration.

Groups provide a powerful way to share collections with a class, work closely with a colleague on a project, keep track of conversations in your field more broadly, and keep tabs on what people at your institution or in your department are working on. To copy items into any of your groups just drag and drop items from your library into any of your group libraries and subcollections. Below you can see an image of your groups inside Zotero.

Your group can be published as a web page, either public or private. I am really looking forward to trying this out (and reporting back here at Nerdlets). The promise for teaching is extraordinary! It could provide a whole new level of interaction in the classroom, not to mention among colleagues and fellow researchers.

Other features are also in the works:

As we refine this beta release, the Zotero team will roll out its recommendation engine, a storage solution for sharing attached files, more ways to navigate through collections online, and the ability to view feeds from public groups and libraries.

Stay tuned for updates. I look forward to posting a full review and guide in the near future.

You can get the latest release here. I have a quick-start guide posted here.

Spell Check your Ancient Greek in OpenOffice

Tommy — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 01:39:24 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

Are you using Unicode to type in ancient Greek (if not, follow this guide)? Do your prefer OpenOffice to Microsoft Office? Well today is the day where it all pays off. There is only one Word Processor in the world that spell-checks ancient Greek, and that’s OpenOffice. You can set it up by installing this plugin for OpenOffice 2.4 or higher.

Protect Yourself from the Conficker Worm

Tommy — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:02:08 +0000

You may have heard about a new threat to your computer: the Conflicker worm. Over 3 million computers are infected, and the scary thing is, you won’t know if you’ve got it until it’s too late. By too late, I mean tomorrow, when the worm “activates” and starts making a real mess of things. What will happen? NPR has the (slightly oversimplified) details about April 1:

That’s when many of the poisoned machines will get more aggressive about “phoning home” to the worm’s creators over the Internet. When that happens, the bad guys behind the worm will be able to trigger the program to send spam, spread more infections, clog networks with traffic, or try and bring down Web sites.

Technically, this could cause havoc, from massive network outages to the creation of a cyberweapon of mass destruction that attacks government computers. But researchers who have been tracking Conficker say the date will probably come and go quietly.

By “go quietly” NPR means that there will probably not be a massive world-wide shutdown of the internet. That’s all well and good, but your computer may still be infected, and this can and will massively slow down your own internet connection, as well as more significant problems. The best option is to fix the issue by following this excellent guide.

You may also want to consider using OpenDNS in the future, which is a faster and safer way to access the internet, and has been Conflicker-free for awhile now. It’s pretty easy: follow this guide.

As usual, Mac and Linux users are safe and sound.

Download Internet Explorer 8 (Please!)

Tommy — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:35:54 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

Now don’t get me wrong, I still think everyone should be using Firefox as their default web-browser. But I’m a realist, and sometimes you just need Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE). And if you’re going to use Microsoft, then you should really definitely immediately download IE8, released today at noon.

There are a whole host of reasons to do this—security, speed, eye-candy, convenience, lots of new features—but the most important reason is to support Microsoft in their new not-evil policies. For the first time ever Internet Explorer will be standards-compliant by default. This is good news for browsers, programmers, and Microsoft; it will truly change the web be ensuring that every web page is viewable regardless of Operating System or Browser.

So if you’re running Windows, download today. You’ll be glad you did, and you will be doing something good for all of us!

In the interest of full-disclosure, I should mention that viewing this site in IE7 results in a couple of formatting problems (with 3rd-party widgets and things), but IE8 displays everything perfectly. This is because IE8 is now standards-compliant! Thanks Microsoft!

eBook of the Greek New Testament (UBS4) for the Kindle, iPod, or iPhone

Tommy — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 06:17:09 +0000

Update: The links to the ebook in question have been (preemptively) removed pending licensing discussions. See here. Perhaps I will have time in the future to provide a Tischendorf version, which is in the open domain.

Having Googled long and hard for a free, accented, open-source, Unicode eBook of the Greek New Testament, and to no avail, I decided to make one myself.

Getting the Book

You can download the NA26/UBS4 Greek New Testament eBook in the following formats (right-click and “Save File As”): Kindle, Palm, mobi, and xhtml. Follow the instructions for your device. The Kindle version is the best, so use that if your device supports it. You can convert eBook files using the free application Calibre.

iPhone and iPod Touch users can use the free application Stanza with this guide to get everything set up (it’s easy).

If you need another format for your reader, try Stanza’s Desktop Reader to convert one format to another.

I will post about new releases and improvements on this site, so if you like what you see you may want to subscribe. There are a couple of improvements I would like to make–like sub-chapters and a better Table of Contents–but that will have to wait for another time. Stay tuned!

Licensing

The source text is for this eBook came from the MorphGNT with UBS4 (ver. 5.08) by CCAT and James Tauber, as produced by the Work Viewer web-app created by the Open Scriptures project. It is the same Greek text you will find on the much more robust Resurgence Greek Project and was originally derived from NA26.

This eBook is distributed and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, as allowed and required by the use of MorphGNT.

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