Anyone with a feed reader can now follow public Zotero libraries simply by clicking the feed icon at the right-hand side of the browser address bar. Feeds are generated at the library and collection level, and for group libraries as well as individual libraries.

This feature provides a great way for people both inside and outside the Zotero community to keep track of the latest and greatest additions to libraries and collections, and it will work with any browser and feed reader.

We are excited to announce two major releases. This morning the Zotero team launched both Zotero 1.5 and the first release of Zotero’s web application. Watch the screencast below for details on 1.5 and see the list below for a brief list of Zotero’s new features.

Zotero 1.5 Features



• Automatic synchronization of collections across multiple computers. For example, sync your PC at work with your Mac laptop and your Linux desktop at home.


• Free automatic backup of your library data at Zotero.org.


• Automatic synchronization of your attachment files to a server of your choice (e.g. iDisk, Jungle Disk, or university-provided web storage).


• Recover recently deleted items with Zotero’s trash can.


• Rich-text notes
  


• New style manager allowing you to add and delete CSLs and legacy style formats


• Automatic detection of PDF metadata (author, title, etc.)


• Automatic detection and support for proxy servers



New Website Features



• Browse through your library online.


• New user profiles tied to Zotero accounts.


• Preliminary support for following other Zotero users: In the future this will generate a twitter-like feed of users public research activity.


• WYSIWYG CV creator, with the ability to dynamically generate all or part of your CV from Zotero collections.


• Search for friends, colleagues, and other users by institutional affiliation, username, email address, or field of interest.

As the Zotero development community diligently refines Zotero 1.5, we are also starting to break ground on the new Zotero website. To whet your appetite, here is a small taste of what’s to come.

Zotero 1.5 Sync Preview users can now take advantage of preliminary read access to their synced collections from any web browser on any computer, including a version formatted for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch. The image to the right is a screenshot of browsing a collection on an iPhone. Just think of the possibilities!

To try this out, you will need to have synced your Zotero 1.5 library to the Zotero server. Then simply visit https://beta.zotero.org and log in to view your library.

Zotero is now compatible with LibraryThing and CiteULike. Users can now capture bibliographic information from both lists of references and individual items in CiteULike and information about any individual book in their LibraryThing collection. As always, compatibility with new sites and tools brings Zotero closer to its goal of supporting seamless online research. In this case, it is particularly exciting to see closer connections between web tools built for managing books and research materials.

Zotero 1.0.3 is now available. In addition to supporting thirteen more sites and resolving an assortment of bugs with word processor integration, 1.0.3 offers some new features for sharing bibliographies on the web.

It is now easier than ever to insert bibliographic information into blog posts, forum discussions, and web pages. Through Zotero’s export preferences (shown below) you can now include HTML markup in drag and drop bibliographies. To include HTML in your drag and drop bibliographies, all you need to do is check the new “Copy as HTML” box on the export pane of your Zotero preferences.

Beyond adding HTML to style your references, this feature will also embed metadata in COinS with many of the most popular item types. This turns your drag and drop bibliographies into smart bibliographies. Anyone who comes across your references on the web will be able to instantly capture them and add them to their Zotero collections.

From the Preferences pane you can also configure site-specific settings to use specific styles and preferences for different domain paths. Site-specific settings allow you to set different preferences for the different sites you edit. For example you can set a preference to use Wikipedia citation templates automatically at Wikipedia.org, or set it to use MLA style and include HTML for bibliographies that you include on your blog. To add a site-specific setting, click the plus sign at the bottom of the Preferences pane. Then enter the Domain/Path that you want the specific settings applied to and choose your style. If you want to include HTML, then simply check the “Copy as HTML” box.

You can see the full changelog for 1.0.3 here.