Following a string of critical reports about its software development practices in the United States, Zotero Director Sean Takats recently visited the project’s North American facilities. He traveled to several key sites of Zotero production last week.

In Cambridge, Massachusetts, Senior Developer Simon Kornblith led Takats on a tour of his laboratory, home of Zotero’s standalone client development. “Although my scientific research dabbles in the creation of unspeakable monstrosities, my work on Zotero is purely humanitarian,” Kornblith asserted with a maniacal laugh. In Brooklyn, New York, Takats verified that Lead Developer Dan Stillman never labors for more than 168 hours per week. “I’m required to answer 3,000 forum posts per shift,” Stillman explained, admitting that the repetitive process can be physically and mentally draining. “Sometimes I think about resting.” The facilities tour concluded in Fairfax, Virginia, where Faolan Cheslack-Postava leads Zotero’s web application development. Referring to notes scribbled on the back of his hand, Cheslack-Postava stated, “It’s a common misconception that every formatted citation or API request involves thousands of tiny fingers operating behind the scenes.” After nervously glancing at Takats, he continued, “No one can substantiate beyond a reasonable doubt that Zotero has employed a single minor since 2006.” In promotional materials the Zotero project claims that citations are generated by gigantic but friendly Japanese robots.

At each site, Takats donned an adorable yellow plastic cap and raincoat to pose for photographers.

Last month Trevor Owens retracted “The Anguish and the Elation of Dan Cohen,” a soapbox rant about poor Zotero working conditions that he had periodically shouted at passersby in the bowels of Washington D.C.’s Union Station. It was nothing but a pack of damn lies, say sources. Former Zotero Director Cohen, who abandoned the project in 2010 vowing to “focus on the synergy between cash and fun,” had no comment.

Today we’re delighted to announce that Zotero 3.0 has officially arrived. Zotero 3.0 marks a major departure from previous versions, most notably with the new ability to run outside the Firefox browser. Available for Mac, Windows, and Linux, this standalone version of Zotero contains all the great functionality of the old Firefox-based Zotero but now enables users to integrate Zotero into browsers other than Firefox like Google Chrome and Apple Safari. To all you Firefox lovers out there, no need to worry! Zotero continues to work within Firefox, and even if you choose to run the standalone version, it will talk to Firefox, too.

The standalone version of Zotero isn’t the only major news: Zotero 3.0 is loaded with other new features. Duplicate detection, heavily requested over the last few years, has finally made an appearance. We hope you’ll agree it has been worth the wait: an elegant interface allows users to find and merge duplicate items. Also arriving with Zotero 3.0 is slick new word processor integration. A streamlined dialog box allows users to add references to documents quickly and efficiently (and it’s pretty, too). References in word processing documents are also now easily shareable with other Zotero users without using groups and even with people using other compatible software.

We’ll highlight this new functionality and more over the next few weeks, but for now we would just like to offer a big thanks to our dedicated user and developer community, whose feedback and contributions were essential in getting this huge release ready for primetime!

Over the past few weeks, a spate of paid and free Android and iPhone apps have appeared that extend and enrich the Zotero research ecosystem. Here are four of the most exciting mobile applications now available:

Zandy

Zandy is well on its way to being the first full-featured mobile Zotero application for Android devices. Users can currently edit and view their Zotero libraries, add new items, and work offline. Future releases promise even more functionality.

Scanner for Zotero

Scanner for Zotero lets you add books to your Zotero library from anywhere, with no need to have Zotero installed anywhere. Simply scan a book’s ISBN barcode with your Android phone, and the software will add the book to your Zotero library directly on our servers.

BibUp

BibUp allows iPhone users to add books to their Zotero libraries much like Scanner for Zotero, and it also provides the additional functionality of photographing specific pages to be collected, on which BibUp will even perform OCR.

ZotFile

ZotFile Reader eases the transfer of Zotero-based PDFs to and from mobile readers like Android devices and the iPad. It builds on the success of the original ZotFile extension, which significantly enhances Zotero’s built-in PDF management by automating the attachment of PDFs to Zotero items, and the renaming of those files according to user-configurable rules. The latest beta version of ZotFile combines all of this functionality into a single extension.

As amazing as these projects are, the traffic on the Zotero developers mailing list suggests that we can expect even more exciting developments in the near future!

Eleven months ago, we announced Zotero Everywhere, a grant-funded initiative to extend Zotero far beyond the Firefox browser. Last week we took the wraps of our new site design, which allows users to edit and reorganize their libraries via the web. Today we’re thrilled to announce the immediate availability of beta versions of Zotero Everywhere software. Because the idea of Zotero Everywhere was to be, well, everywhere, there are several different components to this beta release that can be used independently or in conjunction with each other.

Zotero 3.0b1 for Mac, Windows, and Linux. Since 2006, Zotero has run as a pane (or more recently, as a tab) within the Firefox browser. Many users, however, have expressed their preference to run Zotero as an entire separate desktop application. As of today, researchers can now download and install a version of Zotero that runs fully independently of the Firefox browser. The user interface remains familiar enough so that long-time Zotero users won’t get lost, but this application also includes important new functionality, including automatic duplicate detection and resolution; an entirely new and streamlined integration with Microsoft Word and OpenOffice; and a refined quick search interface.

Zotero 3.0b1 for Firefox. The “classic” version of Zotero isn’t going away, and so we’re also bringing the same new functionality to the version of Zotero that runs inside the Firefox — except, of course, the ability to run outside the browser!

Zotero Connector Betas. Today Zotero’s ability to grab bibliographic items with a single click now comes to browsers other than Firefox. If Zotero 3.0 is installed, Chrome and Safari users can now add items to their Zotero libraries with a single click. If Zotero isn’t installed on the user’s machine, the Zotero Connector can even add items directly to the user’s Zotero library hosted on our server (Please note that this entirely new direct-to-server functionality requires some rewriting of Zotero translators, a process currently underway. Amazon, arXiv, JSTOR, and the New York Times are among those already upgraded).

Remember that Zotero 3.0b1 and the Connectors are beta software! If you’re in the middle of a project or not comfortable running beta software, use Zotero 2.1, the latest stable release of Zotero, instead.