Until Zotero 2.0 comes out, which will be server-based as opposed to client-based, keeping track of research across multiple computers is a challenge. The solution I’ve been using on my windows boxes is a combination of Firefox Portable, Zotero, and MS Synctoy. Firefox Portable will let you install an instance of the browser on a thumb drive, or any other drive, on your system. That way you can keep it with you and access your citations from any machine. Because running anything off of a thumb drive is excruciatingly slow, what I end up doing is using it to transfer all my Zotero files between computers (letting Synctoy manage the updating) and run it from the hard drive, like this:

It works great, but what I’d really like to do is turn the whole synchronization over to the cloud. SugarSync is an interesting tool that will synchronize any folder on your computer (Macs included) doing much of what Synctoy is doing, but without a thumb drive.

It works well, and may be a good solution. It’s fee-based and you get 10GB space. The only drawback being that you can’t execute portable firefox remotely (which makes sense.) I’ll keep testing, and waiting for Zotero 2.0.

Found via Lorcan Dempsey’s blog, I’m looking forward to Zotero‘s public beta, supposedly this Fall ’06. The main problem with any type of academic blogging is the ability to cite articles (like I did with the above blog) even though the link target may be behind a pay firewall of some kind. It stands to reason that services along the lines of Zotero might help make that the process less of a pain. Check out their list of supported sites. Very interesting.