(Classic) Feature of the week: Posting Publications

Hi everybody!

As we allow ourself a short rest from BibSonomy's strict monthly release cycle, the next few blog posts here will cover some of BibSonomy's basic features. We start this series of "classic" features with describing the process of entering publications into BibSonomy.

Most of BibSonomy's users are using the bookmarklet buttons which allow to automatically extract all necessary meta data from the browser's window. Nevertheless, BibSonomy offers several ways to enter relevant information for a given publication. Today I'll describe the most basic one - namely manual data entry of all required fields.
By navigating to "post publication" in BibSonomy's menu,the input form for entering publication meta information is shown:

We know that entering publication meta information is a tedious work and we try our best to reduce the required steps for successfully filling out all fields. During the manual data entry process, the most valuable support is given by a full-text-search based autocompletion. If you partially enter the title of a publication which is already known to BibSonomy, you can select the corresponding entry from a list of recommendations. All available form fields will be copied and it remains for you to provide the set of appropriate tags:

Stay tuned and happy tagging!

.folke

Feature of the Week: Updated mobile interface

Since its first release in May the mobile version of BibSonomy has received some smaller updates. Here they are:

• Especially on mobile devices typing and retyping user names and passwords can be tedious. Therefore , the login screen now offers a checkbox to choose staying logged in after the session.
• If you'd like to see the original BibSonomy page on your mobile screen you may use the "Switch to normal view" link in the footer of the mobile layout. Similarly, you can switch back using the "Switch to mobile view" link in the footer of the normal view.
• Your choice of view is now stored. Thus, once you decide to use the normal view, you'll see that view until you decide otherwise. You won't have to switch to your preferred view each time you visit BibSonomy.

Happy Tagging!
Stephan

Feature of the week: Supported Filetypes

Some months ago, Stephan presented BibSonomy's enhanced file upload feature which allows you to attach documents to your publication meta data - such as, e.g., a private copy of the paper or your own personal notes. In response to your feedback, we extended the list of supported file types which now encompasses the following file types:

• pdf for the Portable Document Format
• ps for PostScript files
• djv, djvu for scanned documents in the DjVu file format
• txt for plain text files
• doc, docx for Microsoft Word documents
• ppt, pptx for PowerPoint presentations
• xls, xlsx for Excel spreadsheets
• ods, odt, odp for documents, spreadsheets and presentations in the OpenDocument format

Please let us know, if your favourite file format is not supported.
Once again: Happy Tagging!
.folke

Feature of the Week: The Hidden Tag

Not so long ago we introduced Hidden SystemTags. SystemTags are tags, that usually come with a special ability, such as markup (e.g. myown lets one of your posts appear on your cv page) or certain functionality (e.g. send forwards posts to another user's inbox).
Hidden SystemTags are those among them, that are visible only to you who used it, but not to anyone else who might take a look at your posts or tags.

With the last release, we introduced a new such SystemTag that does nothing:

sys:hidden:<somethingVerySecret>.

It does nothing? Why use it then? - Well, the feature simply allows you to use private tags. You may use any tag you like with the prefixes sys:hidden: or system:hidden: and no one else will see them.
The sys:hidden-Tag (as any hidden systemTag) is visible to you once you hover with your mouse over the little cog wheel in a post's tag list.

Note, that the hidden tag is not meant to be a privacy feature. Rather, the feature allows to hide tags e.g. organizational-note-tags from publication lists for beautification.
The hidden tags are not visible on tag clouds and post lists, but, you can e. g. query for a certain sys:hidden tag and still find all posts tagged with it. For really private information the private note feature of publications will be the appropirate choice.

Happy Tagging!
Stephan