Mendeley is trying to be for academics what last.fm is for music fans. When I graduated in 2008 it still wasn’t that stable, but since then I have used it exclusively as citation management software. Today, I’ll write a bit how I incorporate it into my literature review process and how it fits in with writing.

What does it do?
It recognizes academic papers or other literature pieces. To me, this is the killer function. Simply copy a paper into your Mendeley folder and it will try and recognize what it is. This saves you a lot of typing time. Once you have your source in the library, it also syncs the actual file to the Mendeley servers, if you want this. Online you can see what others are reading or publishing, as well as search for papers. This give it that added social component, which is cool. What is great is that you can import a document into your library with a single click from the online library. The web importer is also great: simply click the bookmarklet and Mendely will add the currently viewed tab in your browser to your library, often recognizing the content (e.g.: authors, date, title, etc). As easy as that. You can also create folders or groups of papers. More on this later.

Bookmarklet importing a web source

Citations
Next, and probably most interesting if you using Word for writing, is that you can download and install a plugin that allows Mendeley to grab citation details from your library and put these in Word, Neo and Open Office. If you are using a citation style such as Harvard (Author, Date) this might not be a big deal, but for IEEE or ACM papers that use numerical citation styles (e.g.: [2,4,5]), this will save you a lot of work. Even with Harvard-like styles, you might end up combing through your text, trying to find sources that are missing in the bibliography. This process is automatic in Mendeley and all the used sources will appear in the bibliography automatically, in the stipulated format, from which there are quite few to choose from.

Citing is easy. Once the plugin is installed you get a menu option in your word processor of choice. When clicked, this takes you to Mendeley and allows you to select one or more sources. Once you selected, you are taken back to Word where your citations have appeared (in the text and bibliography).

Less than 100 citations seem to work fine in a document but I find that it starts getting worse from there. As for the library size it works fine with medium sized sets of sources, but I have noticed that once you get to 1k of sources in your library, startup can be sluggish. I have also given up on trying to make sure I don’t have duplicates and wrong meta data.

Groups

Mendeley Groups
I’d recommend groups for every new project, but try and not be too enthusiastic with adding sources if you are not actually using them in your text. Your groups get messy and you lose all oversight. In order to keep things accurate, I make sure that all the documents in a particular active folder is in a pristine state. Doing so for your entire library feels little futile. Just make sure that what you cite is correct.

You can grab Mendeley here.

TLDR: Mendeley is great for managing and organizing your sources. It saves you a lot of time in formatting citations for your text. Works well with Word.

In general, LaTex is much more popular in the hard sciences since it allows you to create nicely rendered equations. However, it has also been somewhat popular amongst humanities students who do not need to have equations in their text.

I found it remarkably easy to switch: I had about 10k words written for my thesis, in a document containing about 100 citations generated by Mendeley. The hardest part was switching my Harvard-style citations over to BibTex, but even this wasn’t as bad because I could search for “(Gefen 2000)” and replace all occurrences with its BibTex equivalent (\cite{Gefen2000}). In total, the whole procedure took me less than a day. This includes figuring out how LaTex and BibTex works. Below I will highlight some of the pro’s and con’s that influenced my decision to try it out. I’d like to state that I am a novice, so if anyone with a lot more LaTex experience wants to correct anything, let me know.

PROS
Citations
LaTex + BibTex + Mendeley makes citation easy. This is probably the main reason you could consider switching. Mendeley does a pretty decent job of recognizing papers. It is also capable of generating .bib files, with citation keys pre-made (AuthorDate). This makes it very versatile since if you are managing your library with Mendeley, you can always still use Word to write shorter pieces of text, whilst still benefiting from your citations. Citing in LaTex is dead easy: once you know the citation key, the only thing to do is write \cite{CitationKey}. Writing software such as TexMaker makes this process even easier by offering a drop down of existing citations, sourced from your .bib file (think of it as a linked .css file). The benefits of BibTex are even clearer when you are dealing with 100+ citations. Word + Mendeley just isn’t that good (yet) when handling larger bibliographies. The benefits are even greater when you using number based citations like ACM or IEEE: LaTex generates these automatically.

Another major plus it the ability to insert page numbers into your citations: \cite[p. 192]{Putnam 2000}. The sky is the limit when it comes to library size.

Flexibility
When writing in Word, you are stuck with using MS Word on your PC or Mac. Alternatives like Open Office don’t always play nice with your .doc(x) files, so you really have no alternative. With LaTex, you can choose any text editor. This also means that you are platform independent. For some people this might not be a important, but since I routinely use Mac, Windows and Linux (Mint), it is a plus. You could even opt to write it in your browser. Additionally you can use fullscreen editors that allow for distraction free writing, ultimately saving you a lot of time. You also have direct control of the text: there is no second guessing what your word processor is doing: you can see the inner workings.

Stable
LaTex is stable. If your Word document has ever become corrupted, or all your citations lost, I think you can really appreciate the stability of LaTex.

Formatting, Numbering
One of the biggest headaches in Word is getting a nice table of contents and consistent numbering. Sure, it is possible to do so, but the process is not as intuitive as it could be. LaTex is super easy. It has a hierarchy, depending on the document class, and merely typing \chapter{Introduction} tells it that there is a new chapter. The code \section{Method}, denotes a section in that chapter, etc. Putting in a table of contents is as easy as typing \tableofcontents. Images and captions are also significantly easier to deal with. I remember spending a day on my bachelors thesis, just to get the images where I want them. Additionally, pdf’s generated can have hyperlinks to text, figures, citation, etc., plus bookmarks to your chapters.

CONS
Coding
If you haven’t coded before, LaTex might be daunting. Most of us grew up using Word or some other alternative where we are not confronted with the inner workings of the text. With LaTex you are exposed to the syntax. This, once again, sounds more daunting than it is: it is actually simpler than HTML and many people are are quite familiar with this (thanks MySpace!).

Compatibility
Outside of the technical sciences, LaTex is not a very widely used. This can be problematic if you are required to send drafts of your work to colleagues. However, there are some LaTex -> Word -> converters, which makes collaborating easier. I can’t vouch for these though, I haven’t used one.

Design
The default design of a LaTex document looks quite good if you are writing a thesis in Humanities or Technical Sciences. For Design students, this might not suffice. Changing fonts and layout is possible, but there is a slight learning curve. However, you can opt to write entirely in LaTex and then produce a text file (.rtf or .doc) that you can then place into InDesign, so you can design your final document the way you want it. However, there are loads of LaTex packages available that will allow you to create documents that look just the way you want.

To conclude: if you are used to writing rudimentary code and don’t mind working in a text editor, then you might want to give LaTex a try. Setup is not that hard and there are lots of example and source files available. I would generally recommend it for longer writing projects with lots of citations. If you are not using a lot of sources in your writing, then it might not be worth the effort to switch. Simple documents such as short essays might not be easier to write in LaTex.

A few resources:
Citations in LaTeX
Great General Tutorial by Andy Roberts
Default LaTex Layout (pdf)

Some software:
TexMaker, a good cross platform editor.
MikTex (You’ll need this to compile your document in Windows)
MacTex (You’ll need this to compile your document in OSX)

Divided up in two parts, the book deals initially with the theoretical basis of emotional design and then it delves into the practicality. However, I it felt as if the final two chapters (Emotional Machines, The Future of Robots) was more suited for the third book in the installment called The Design of Future things.

However, having said that, I think this book does a good job of discussing the field of emotional design, but more importantly, to me at least it is an indication that even if you can scientifically proof your new way of typing/printing/login is faster or better, your still need to deal with the softer, much less definable emotional side of design.

The three titles are as follows:
The Design of Everyday Things
Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things
The Design of Future Things

Let’s just say that I wasn’t entirely impressed. Maybe it was Lindstrom’s tone of speaking: It was twenty-five times larger than any neuromarketing study ever before attempted. Using the most cutting-edge scientific tools available, it revealed the hidden truths behind how branding and marketing messages work on the human brain, how our truest selves react to stimuli at a level far deeper than conscious thought and hour our minds control our behavior.

Some parts of it read more like a Hollywood trailer text than a book based on good old science. But I digress. In general, the book was interesting. There a lot of really fascinating examples of previous studies (always interesting) about selling, products and product marketing. Lindstrom is also quite a knowledgeable guy and that shows.

Buy it or not? I’d say that the studies themselves are very fascinating, it just isn’t the book that will “overturn your cherished beliefs”, like the Spectator claims on the cover.
Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy

What is apparent after reading, is that mobile user experience is still in it’s infancy. I was strangely reminded of the early days of Computer Interaction Design (which I didn’t witness, but the literature speaks volumes, excuse the pun). There is still an incredible amount of inconsistency and the myriad of different handsets out there is not making things easier.

The best way to describe this book would be as an introduction to mobile application design. A lot of time is spent explaining the context of mobile devices, not only their usage context, but also the context in which they are sold, what the issues are with carriers, compatibility etc. Which leads me to my biggest criticism:
If you are looking for a book with mobile design guidelines, you will most probably be disappointed. This is dealt with fairly briefly in the sixth chapter, making this book of somewhat less value from a purely Interaction Design point of view. However, as a redeeming point, I feel that taking so much time in looking at what surrounds developing and designing mobile applications is somewhat necessary, given the relative newness of this field.

All in all, I can say I was fairly satisfied with it, although I am still not convinced that this book is worth what it is being sold for (£37.95 at Amazon UK, $64.00 at Amazon US and 43,95 EUR at Amazon DE).