Thursday, April 12, 2012

Feature of the week: Organize your publications with the help of QR Codes

Organizing your publications became easier with the help of BibSonomy. Now the workflow will even become more comfortable. We introduce a brand new experimental feature to help you putting together references with the help of QR Codes.

We implemented the possibility to automatically embed a QR Code containing the URL of the corresponding BibSonomy post into your uploaded documents which can be read and decoded by the new QR Code scanner inside the clipboard. Of course you can always choose to download your document with or without the QR Code.

After uploading a private copy of one of your collected publications you will recognize a new entry on the right side of the already familiar download link reading "including a QR Code":



The red box marks the link to click if you want BibSonomy to embed the QR Code into the copy of your document. The modified version is provided as a direct download - same as usual. 

The QR Code can be read by any QR Code reader. It contains the URL to the corresponding post. The new QR Code scanner on the clipboard page goes even further and immediately adds the corresponding post to your clipboard. Simply hold the QR code in front of your webcam such that the code appears in the designated area in the sidebar of the clipboard page.



















After sucessfully decoding the QR-Code, you'll hear the "snap sound and the post that belongs to your publication will have been added to your clipboard.  



Workflow suggestion:

When writing a paper for your studies you search for related work and references. Create posts on BibSonomy to get a digital representation of your reference collection. Procede by printing these references with an embedded QR Code. Finally you can put together the papers you actually want to cite by scanning them with the QR Code scanner.
This gives you the opportunity to compile a sublist of your collection of publications in the blink of an eye without having to remember where the corresponding post is located.

We are currently working to make the feature even faster. Stay tuned for one of our next updates.

Happy Scanning
Philipp

PS: For the QR Code Scanner to work, you have to install the flash plugin on your system.