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If you use Zotero to manage your references, then make sure you save this article. Watch video below if you want to know more about Zotero.

Zotero is getting better and better. In a while, version 1.5 will bring synchronization, online backup of your library, +1100 CSL citation styles, and PDF metadata extraction (for the daring, a sync preview version is available). But even in its current incarnation Zotero is easily one of the best bibliographic managers out there. Here are twelve tips and tricks that help you to get the most out of it.

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This week we have been very busy assisting school districts and interested colleges/universities to understand the many features of the Virtual PE Administrator (more about our college/university partnerships later). Designed to help track and assess student progress on meeting specific grade level standards for physical education, the Virtual PE Administrator provides a “Physical Education Progress Report” based on their achievement on the designated core physical education standards for each grade level:

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Startup PBWorks, which was formerly known as PBwiki, specializes in helping businesses, non-profits, and educational institutions collaborate via wikis. The startup has been steadily adding real-time features to its platform over the past year, most recently integrating Twitter-like microblogging, tapping into the real-time stream and adding a template store. Today, PBworks is adding another collaborative feature: PBVoice, which is click-to-call conferencing from within the platform.

The platform, which received, an overhaul of its user interface and features last year, offers businesses a project management application and a customized wiki workspace, with mobile support, document management, access controls and more. Now, users can make a conference call from within the platform by simply clicking the names of the desired participants. Unlike most conferencing calls, there’s no dial-in number; PBVoice will call all the participants. Users can add new participants at any time, and each conference call is recorded and stored for later use and review. You can also send the recording of the call to any participants.

The beauty of the integration is that the conference calling feature is an extension of the collaboration platform. Users can call anyone with a single click who already has a PBworks profile or manually dial in any number. PBworks Voice runs on the open source FreeSWITCH telephony platform and phone systems are hosted in PBworks’ own datacenter.

For now calling is limited to the U.S. and Canada but the startup plans to enable international calls in the future. PBworks is launching a free beta period of the service today which is capped at 200 minutes for the next month. When the beta finishes, all PBworks paid subscriptions will automatically come with 200 minutes per month. For nationwide calls, 300 min per user per month will cost $5 per user. 2000 minutes for nationwide calling will amount to $20 per user per month.

Currently, PBworks manages 1 million hosted workspaces with over 3 million active users and has accumulated a loyal client base. The company serves teams from many of the Fortune 500, and was home to three presidential campaigns, the United Nations, The Financial Times and Harvard University. Like Salesforce, PBworks is a paid subscription service, with no advertising. The company has raised nearly $2.5 million in funding, with its most recent funding round of $2.1 million announced in 2007. Competitors include Microsoft Sharepoint, Jive, and Socialtext.

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Instant Messaging

* One combined buddy list for all your AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, Jabber, and Facebook Chat Accounts.
* Manage multiple conversations with tabbed conversation windows. You can drag tabs out into their own windows for important conversations.
* Rename contacts with an alias so you don’t have to remember buddy names like ‘giantsfan123′.
* If one of your friends has more than one IM account you can combine them into a single merged contact to eliminate duplicate buddies.
* Send your friends SMS messages right from the IM window.
* The InfoBox lets you check everyone’s status message and profile just by moving your mouse down the list.
* Changing your status has never been easier. just one click right on the buddy list!
* Multitask while you chat. Minimize the IM window and you see popups of new IM’s. Best of all, you can reply right from the popup and get back to what you were doing.
* Log conversation history and find the information you need our search-enabled log viewer.
* And so much more.

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Original article from TechCrunch

We’ve written about social networking platforms that are tailored for the science and research community. ResearchGATE aimed to be the LinkedIn for Scientists. Today, Sciencefeed is launching as a realtime micro blogging platform designed specifically for scientists.

Sciencefeed allows users to post short microblogs (not restricted to 140 characters) on scientific headlines, new findings, controversy, conferences and ideas related to science. You can follow users; respond to other member’s entries, and comment on various topics in realtime. You can search for topics and keywords fairly easily and publish updates to Twitter and Facebook. Since conferences are an integral part of scientific research, Scienfeed allows users to create groups around events and even aggregate updates from participants based on a hashtag, similar to Twitter. Publications can be attached to a feed, allowing users to automatically search through 10 different literature databases (such as PubMed) and RSS feeds.

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From TechCrunch

Every year as broadband reaches more people, online education keeps growing and growing. So far, though, most online education focusses on vocational courses, test preparation, or supplemental tutoring. One startup trying to bring entire degree programs online is 2tor, which just closed a $20 million Series B funding at a rumored valuation of around $100 million. Highland Capital Partners led the round, with previous investors Redpoint, Novak Biddle, and City Light Capital participating. Last June, the company raised $10 million in a Series A.

“What is unique about 2tor is they are the first online education program to go after the high end—elite programs at elite schools,” says Paul Maeder, a founder and general partner at Highland who will be taking a board seat. 2tor was founded by John Katzman, who previously founded test-prep giant Princeton Review. Originally, he wanted to start 2tor as a division of the Princeton Review, but it goes after such a different part of the education market that he decided to pursue it as a standalone startup instead. In partnership with universities and graduate programs, 2tor designs and produces fully-accredited online degree programs, and even recruits the students as well.

The first school to use 2tor is USC for its Masters of Art in Teaching. USC faculty teach the course, which they help design, and 2tor provides the technology platform. Students from all around the country can take classes online, watching high-quality video lectures, check assignments, sign up for online office hours, and use online chat to talk to other students. “It is more like Facebook than like Blackboard,” says Katzman, (Blackboard is one of the more established online learning platforms). “What’s great about a great university are the other students. You want a platform that at its core is conversation,” says Katzman.”

The USC graduate program in teaching has about 75 students on campus, but almost 750 online who all pay the same tuition. “The notion that if you are a professor there you can help dozens of students in southern California is great,” says Katzman, “but the notion that you can help thousands of students across the country is even better.” The promise of online education is that schools are no longer constrained by physical location or classroom size (although each online class itself can be smaller in number of students).

Katzman is in negotiations with more universities to open up two or three more programs this year. Initially, he is concentrating on graduate programs for nursing, MBAs, and possibly engineering. Each program is designed in partnership with the faculty who come up with the curriculum and teach it, with 2tor then acting as the producer, student recruiter, and IT shop. Revenues for each class will be split between the universities and 2tor.

“Education is an enormous market still being delivered by and large the way it was by Socrates,” says Maeder. “It is a mediocre educational experience to lock people in a room and talk at them for an hour and a half.” He thinks 2tor can help change the way people learn.