Mendeley

Today I returned to a program that I quite like, Mendeley. This reference management software allows you to store PDFs and references, and to share them with collaborators. Especially nice is that your library can be synchronised on several computers through an online personal account. Also nice is that bibliographic metadata information can be automatically extracted from PDF files that are simply drag-and-dropped into a Mendeley folder. Although this feature has clearly not yet been fully developed, it already works well for PDFs of which the DOI can be found on the first page. In principle, plugins are available for WORD allowing citation and referencing, but this still has many problems to be useful. All-in-all, Mendeley does not quite yet offer a full alternative for reference managing software like Endnote or Reference Manager, but its development is rapid so I would not be surprised if this changes in the very near future. Finally, Mendeley lets you create your a personal online profile.

Back to the good old layout: changing the Microsoft Office 2007 Windows structure

Are you also annoyed by the new version of Office? Lost in the new menu structure. Although one can certainly argue that the old Office had its flaws, at least the menu structure had a certain logic. Things like copy and paste could be found in the Edit menu, cell formatting in the Format menu, most things made sense. And time had taught me where everything else was. However, it was apparently deemed necessary to modernise. So, copy and paste operations disappeared to the Home menu (why?) and I have never really remembered where the cell formatting options went. Luckily, I am not the only one baffled, and clever people have created an add-in to reorganise the menus into the way it used to be. There is the "Classic Menu Manager", easy-to-use and install, but unfortunately not free (trial is free though).

An alternative that appears to be free is "UbitMenu". I am trying it out now and will keep you posted on my experience...

Windows 7 Home Premium in any language you like!

If you have trouble understanding your computer, i.e., you literally don´t speak the language of the installed windows version: try this simple yet effective piece of software!

http://xaueious.wordpress.com/2009/08/22/changing-installed-language-of-windows-7-home-premium-pro-from-en-us/

Even though microsoft would like you to buy the full version, this simple program does the trick and enables you to change the language of the operating system. Freeware, and easy to use.