…besides improving the next version of Mendeley: Today I noticed that two particularly nice messages were pinned to the whiteboard in the developer room. So your encouraging comments are definitely noticed and appreciated - thanks!

(click for larger view)

The very first steps towards a plugin for Microsoft Word are done and we thought we’d give you an early preview. It’s the first alpha and has some known bugs, but most of the time it does the job.

Known issues (which will be fixed in the next releases) are:

• Large download filesize (14.4MB)
• Several Microsoft run-time environments are being installed before the Word plugin is installed
• The plugin will only work for the user who installed it
• Removing documents from your Mendeley library which you have cited in your Word document causes blank citations
• Standard undo doesn’t work as expected after Mendeley action (eg. changing the citation style of bibliography: undo changes back each entry one by one instead of all at once)

You can download the plugin on our download page. We would really appreciate your feedback and bug-reports to improve the plugin for our next release!

Here at Mendeley we’re all working towards version 0.6.0 which will be our next major release in November with a focus on stability and scalability, many interface tweaks, and some nice new features. Version 0.5.9 is a step in this direction but is still based on the old codebase. It will be available via auto-update - if your are using Mendeley Desktop v.0.5.8 just start the application and it will automatically detect the update.

Version 0.5.9 has many bug fixes, some new features (e.g. PDF file renaming according to a chosen schema like “Author - Year - Title - Journal.pdf”), and it will hopefully be joined by an alpha version of a Word plugin in the coming days. See the complete change list below:

Change list:

• New: Auto file renaming
• New: Account usage dialog
• Fix: Speedup opening of edit metadata dialog
• Fix: Possible crash when clicking keep document button (Linux)
• Fix: Size of edit metadata window
• Fix: New documents not appearing if references dragged into my library
• Fix: Possible crash when removing documents from online library
• Fix: Crash when linking an image PDF to manually added metadata
• Fix: Table view dragging not working properly
• Fix: Initial position of edit metadata dialog
• Fix: Reference list in table view
• Fix: Possible crash when closing application if uploads or downloads are in progress
• Fix: Changes to references not appearing immediately when closing edit metadata dialog
• Fix: Problems with shared groups syncing
• Fix: Position of shared group admin buttons in table view
• Fix: Fix PDF being locked after metadata extraction (Windows)
• Fix: Remove debugging output on startup (Linux)
• Fix: Text color of deletion suggested text in table view
• Fix: Tags, notes fields and reference list not being enabled when selecting documents in the library if Mendeley starts up in table view
• Fix: Slight improvements of the citation style
• Fix: Email automatically set for trac tickets
• Fix: Reduced Mendeley power usage while idle

We are happy to announce yet another addition to our web team:

——

Pankaj Naug is yet another strong addition to the Mendeley web team. It took him more than a month to write this text since he likes writing code more than writing about himself.

As a recent member of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, I’m marveling at their events calendar which strikes me as hands down the best entertainment programme in London (if you’re into scientific talks, that is). Two of the four lectures I’ll be attending in the coming weeks are part of the members-only, black-tie “Friday Evening Discourses” that were started by Michael Faraday in 1826 - isn’t that amazing?

One of the talks that I’ll unfortunately have to miss (because I’m travelling to Germany) is this one next Monday, 20th October:

Murder in Mayfair

London is an epicentre of medical advancement, from Edward Jenner’s pioneering work on vaccination to the world’s first heart and lung transplant. But London is also a hotbed of disease and demise and this event will take a look at the notorious murders and strange deaths in the capital. [...].

London has a rich and gruesome history of untimely demises. From the recent past we have the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, only a few minutes’ walk from the Royal Institution, who was killed by a radioactive teapot. 18 years earlier, Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was dispatched with a poison tipped umbrella by Waterloo Bridge.

Or how about this one on 4th November:

The Making of Mr. Gray’s Anatomy

Gray’s Anatomy is probably one of the most iconic scientific books ever published: an illustrated textbook of anatomy that is still a household name 150 years since its first edition, known for its rigorously scientific text, and masterful illustrations as beautiful as they are detailed. The Making of Mr Gray’s Anatomy tells the story of the creation of this remarkable book, and the individuals who made it happen.

Wonderful, isn’t it? So, in the spirit of peppering this blog with Edo period, medieval, and Japanese monster anatomy, here are some more highly rigorous anatomic drawings I just came across:

Via Gizmodo.

On Saturday, October 11th, 2008 between 12:01AM and 6:00AM (BST) our hosting provider will be moving our servers to a new data centre, so Mendeley Servers will be down for a couple of hours during this time. It shouldn’t take longer than 3 or 4 hours. Apologies!

One of the people I admire the most is James Nachtwey, ever since seeing “War Photographer“, the documentary about him. I have watched it four or five times by now, and each time I’m deeply moved both by his photographs and his refusal to become cynical despite the atrocities and suffering he has witnessed.

“Reticent about discussing his own life beyond the basic facts, he’s clearly one of those rare characters who focus singularly on their work with a missionary-like sense of purpose.”
- Salon.com

In 2007, he was the recipient of the TED Prize, which grants $100,000 and “one wish to change the world”:

His wish was for TED to help him “share a vital story with the world”. The story he chose to cover is the growing epidemic of an extremely drug resistant strain of tubercolosis. His pictures have just now been posted on TED:

You can help by visiting XDRTB.org, signing the petition, and spreading the word. There is no donation link on the XDRTB site, but on Action.org. If you’re a microbiologist, perhaps you can do even more!