Productivity Sauce

Zotero is a genuinely useful tool for research and archiving. It runs on different platforms, and thanks to its built-in synchronization feature, you can keep Zotero data in sync across multiple machines. And now you can view and edit Zotero items on your Android device, courtesy of the Zandy app. The app is not free of charge, but it's available under an open source license.

You can install Zandy from the Android Market, and during the first run you have to authorize the app with the Zotero service. This is a rather straightforward procedure, but you have to tweak the default permissions to allow Zandy to access notes as well as add and edit items.

Once you've authorized Zandy, press the Menu button and choose Sync to populate the app with your existing Zotero data. You can then use the View Collections and View Items buttons to browse the existing collections and items. When in the View Collections mode, you can browse items in a specific collection by long-tapping on it. Tap then on an item to view it, then long tap on the contents to edit it. Use the Sync button to sync changes when you're done editing the item. If the item contains an attachment, you can use Zandy to download it to your Android device and view it with an appropriate application. Zandy also integrates with Android's Share feature, so you can, for example, add web pages to Zandy as collection items directly from within the browser.

For a more detailed overview of Zandy's features, take a look at the user guide written by the app's creator. While Zandy is not as powerful as the desktop version of the Zotero application, this nifty little app is indispensable if you need to access your Zotero data from the convenience of the Android device.