Grad School – Bob Martens

I am unreasonably happy about the future public release of Zotero for iOS. I have been using Zotero for years to manage my doctoral research as I continue through my PhD program, but finding a decent workflow for reading, annotating, and then cataloging has been very elusive.

However, Zotero for iOS may, MAY, just fix that issue for me … and not a moment too soon. As I stare my dissertation in the face, Zotero for iOS should allow me to have access to my entire Zotero library, reading PDFs within the application, annotate that PDF, add notes, etc. and then have those changes synced to my Zotero app on my various other devices. That’s a potentially game-changing addition to my workflow.

So I have been able to get on the Zotero for iOS Beta and I am working with it on my iPad Pro right now. If you are interested, I recommend signing up as well and seeing what the future may hold!

I have been spending too much time thinking about digital platforms again. It breaks down into two choices at the moment:

Continue working in Apple’s ecosystem for much of my personal and professional life
Work to move as much as possible to open source and free software alternatives which may include self-hosting a number of items

I have been able to work with a new ThinkPad T495 over the past months and there is a lot that I like about the machine. While it may be a little larger for a daily-carry device, it is quick, has some paths for upgrading, and is rugged enough to serve day-to-day. If I were going to continue trying to move more and more of my work to open source alternatives, I would probably look at a ThinkPad Carbon X1 as my personal device as the slightly smaller footprint coupled with being around 27% lighter would make a difference.

However, what is holding me back isn’t the device nor is it even the operating system (with openSUSE Tumbleweed continuing to receive updates and serve quite ably) … it is the available software in the community along with the seamlessness of mobile workflows.

This is felt most acutely when it comes to task/todo managers, at least for me. I have been suing OmniFocus for the past 5+ years on macOS, iOS, and iPadOS and it has served me very well. There are a lot of fiddly buttons and options to play around with, but I have fallen into a pretty simple way of handling recurring and then one-off items along with keeping track of different projects or contexts.

However, I have yet to find an equivalent application or option that will work between a Linux distro and any mobile operating system. Of course this is complicated by my want for a competent desktop application. I have looked at Todo.txt a little bit but the need for additional plugins to add recurring tasks and other features included with OmniFocus and the lack of a competent mobile app turns me off from that.

That is just the tip of the iceberg and so I am caught, in a sense, in the Apple ecosystem for the time being as I work to consider what options I may have in the future.

Digital ecosystems are complicated.