Visions

[Thad Guidry]

Pure WebDAV is supported with Zotero, but a nice experiment also would be to see if Zotero (GPLv3) can be hacked on a bit to support syncing to any unhosted storage provider you have setup. (instead of JungleDisk or BingoDisk, etc)

I cannot take this on, but anyone else to welcome to run with this and experiment with added unhosted support to Zotero.

Separately...

I can also visualize Diaspora or other Apps that can let others access files that you have previously synced (uploaded) using Zotero, let users comment on them, etc.  That Web App can also let you, +1 things, integrate with the social web, etc.  One such Silo now is Mendeley.com, but they are 'researchers themselves, and you always own your own data".  If that's the case, then exporting into EndNote XML format and being able to upload that with Zotero to your unhosted account is also a viable way to reduce data lockup of your data (instead of using a Mendeley.com account)  But then...I am using WeDoUnhostedStorage.org or WeLikeUnhosted.com for storage...kinda the same for just raw WebDAV storage.  My point is that no matter what...when you use a cloud storage provider...even an unhosted one...there are risks with data integrity.  It's where there is additional value in the storage, where it allows connections to be made, either via external API's or partners with cool Web Apps that reuse the data the you own and control and present it differently, share it differently, allow others to comment or aggregate on it, differently...all while giving you ultimate privacy & control of it.  That's where unhosted (and your data) suddenly become...different. (than the multitude of closed apps that don't know about or use an unhosted philosophy.  Here's hoping that changes soon)

unhost your vision

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-Thad
http://www.freebase.com/view/en/thad_guidry

[Michiel de Jong]

cool stuff! if zotero already supports webdav as a storage backend, then it should be easy to set up the webfinger->oauth->webdav link. but since zotero is something you install, that might not be so very useful. you might as well store the webdav credentials in the installed client.

what does become interesting is what you say about reusing those bibliography details on other web apps. so for that, it makes sense to us a standardized way to access the webdav storage space, and define a bibliography data scope, with a data format.

this really makes me want to work on app development - if we have a few apps to start with, then we can convince zotero to integrate with them, and then once it integrates with zotero, it becomes attractive for other people to iterate on those first few apps.

i'm pretty busy with OwnCloud, BrowserId, and syncStorage for probably all of August, but could dig into it after that. Maybe there's someone else who wants to pick this up?

Cheers!

Michiel