AllPeers | Firefox P2P Add-on
AllPeers Beta | Firefox Add-ons: The filefox add-on has been making news lately. My interest with it is to set up a P2P network for sharing bibliographic info and PDF files within my research group and colleagues.
Bibster is along the same track, but it’s Java, which I hate. It’s interface is rigid and ugly. And you’d have to do a lot of importing. Not sure how you handle PDF there.
Zotero is great as a screenscraper and a SQLite database for bib info. There is talk for a server-based portal, but I haven’t heard anything lately and I don’t know which direction it goes. Hopefully they don’t replicate CiteULike.
Speaking of which, I have love-hate relationship with CiteULike. More love then hate, compared to EndNote, I have to say. CiteULike does everything right, except:
- it’s not open source
- it’s centralized
- It doesn’t have API
- it doesn’t work off line
- it doesn’t import/export correctly
- screenscrapters are old and often don’t work
- …
My dream app is something like a transgenetic monster:
- With screenscraper and interface of Zotero
- tagging and social networking of CiteULike
- Flexible import/export/reformatting abilities like Endnote; but Zotero is getting close
- Open source
- scripting language-based; No recompiling, please
- P2P for biblo and PDF sharing — with only my group and colleagues, of course.
The worst nightmare would be:
- The interface of EndNote (or Bibster)
- Closed source like EndNote/CiteULike
- No sharing/tagging/social networking/discovery like EndNote and Zotero (current version)
- Recompilation like AllPeers
- P2P with security threats or personal-webserver kind of junk from the maker of EndNote (what was that vaporware called?)
- Screwing up Micro$oft Office like EndNote plugins.
(I really don’t care for Cite-as-you-write kind of functions. Great if they actually works without injecting junk. But otherwise, I am happy manually construct a library (or with a special tag) and then generate a list of reference to be pasted to a new Word file. Keep it simple, please!)
AllPeer is (completely??) Open Source. It uses SQLite, which Zotero also uses. Can you share a database?