Reading journal articles on tablets - Getting close to Nirvana?

Watch this video -
Why you ask?  What does it have to do with reading articles on tablets?
Just watch it, and it will all become clear at the end!  If you have the patience to read it all that is.

See 2 recent posts (1, 2) on issues with reading journal articles on tablets.

• Most people want to read journal articles as PDFs
• They may have more convenient access to full text articles at their institutions/work place
• They want to read and annotate the articles on tablets while at home or travelling
• They want to have these annotated articles available from anywhere
• They want to be able to search for and cite these articles when writing papers/blogs etc.

The previous posts covered the first 3 issues listed above.  To close the loop it was important to get these annotated articles back into a searchable library from where they could be cited and for creating bibliographies.

So here is a workflow using a tool called Zotfile which is an extension for Zotero.

What you need

1.  Download Zotero (get standalone version with appropriate connector if you use Chrome or Safari).  The standard version works with Firefox.

2.  Download Dropbox and set up a folder where you would like to share articles between your desktop/s and tablet/s

3.  Download Zotfile

4.  Set up Zotfile to specify a folder where you usually download full text PDFs on your work place computer.

5.  Set up Zotfile to save files from Zotero to the folder mentioned in step 2.

Here is the workflow:

Workflow for sending PDFs to Tablet, and getting back Annotated PDFs from Tablet

 Steps:

1. Learn about an article
1. Feed reader
2. From Social network
3. While browsing/surfing
2. Mark for download to Zotero
1. On Google Reader - Star it, or tag it as Zotero
2. Email link to it
3. Bookmark it using Diigo - put in Zotero list
3. On work computer, go to full text article and download to Zotero
1. This is usually a one click by clicking on the address bar Zotero icon.
2. This will usually grab the related PDF, and also all the metadata like title, journal, authors, abstract etc.
3. You can add notes or tags
4. The search engine works very very well
4. Send article PDF to Tablet
1. Right click on menu item>>manage attachment>> send to Tablet
2. This will send the PDF to the Dropbox folder specified above
5. Read and annotate article on Tablet
1. Open file in Dropbox folder
2. Open with EZPDF
3. Annotate/Highlight/add notes
6. Retrieve annotated article from Tablet
1. On Zotero right click item >> manage attachment >> Get from Tablet
2. The annotated article is saved in Zotero library
3. The annotations are extracted and saved as a separate item
7. Write and Cite
1. This works like most other bibliography tools
2. In addition, you can grab a bunch of citations and drag and drop into Google Docs.

So does this really work? I have tried it for a couple of days and it seems to work.  Here are some screenshots.

1. Once configured, ZotFile adds a "Send to Tablet" and "Get from Tablet" menu items to Zotero

Extracted annotations and highlights from the article linked to the citation

Article on Social Intelligence Hypothesis retrieved from Tablet

A quote from the article highlighted (Highlighting was done on Tablet)

 Why did I use this article as an example?  Remember the video you watched at the beginning of this post?
I had just read this article and was struggling to understand it.  The article mentions using the Prisoner Dilemma and I had meant to read up on it.  Then I saw a tweet by @courosa regarding this incredible video and it became very clear.

Thus it was in fresh in my mind as I was writing this blog post.

How History Taking and a Toyota Mechanic beat a Diagnostic Computer

If you give enough time to an experienced clinician working in an ambulatory setting, what percentage of acute complaints would s/he be able to diagnose correctly with just taking a good history?  What about with history plus physical examination?

The answer is about 50% with history alone and about 80% with history and exam.  Yes, s/he would probably order some confirmatory tests or try some medications as empiric treatment but the above numbers would hold up.

The importance of history taken by an experienced diagnostician was borne out recently.  A warning to regular readers of my blog, this is another car story.  Don't tell me I did not warn you!

I have a 1999 RX300 which was bought mainly to combat the snowy NE Ohio winters.  It has been a reliable vehicle and I fully intend to keep on driving it, till it falls apart.  You will probably accuse me of being an emotional fuddy-duddy but it holds a special sentimental value for the family.  So it was particularly upsetting when last year, early in winter it started to give all kinds of problems.

I took it in to the place where I get the oil changed and they are really nice folks, polite and accommodating.  The check engine light was on, and they queried the car computer, read the code, looked up the computer and told me that some sensors needed to be changed.  We did that but within a day the engine light came on again.  This time the mechanic told me that the transmission was gone and it would cost more than the resale value of the car to fix it.  I was crushed but appreciated the fact that he did not make me spend a ton of money before telling me this.  I began to look for someone who would buy it.

Then a friend of mine recommended that I speak to this guy who works at a Toyota dealership.  The Toyota Highlander is almost exactly the same vehicle as the RX300.  So he might be able to tell me more.  So I gave him a call.  I fully expected him to read him the codes from the computer readout.  Imagine my surprise when he asked me to describe what the car was doing!

I told him how I had gone abroad (a workshop I did for physicians in Singapore in October) for about 2 weeks.  Right after I came back the car started misbehaving.  It would work fine for the first 10 minutes or so and then when I tried to accelerate beyond 40 mph it would start revving up like it was stuck in a lower gear.  I could not go on a freeway for fear of this.  He started laughing and asked me if we had seen any rodents in the garage.  I felt like I was talking to Sherlock Holmes!  My wife had told me that she had seen a rodent near where we kept the dog food bags.

So he explained.  The Highlander and the RX300 have an engine intake area that rodents love to nest in.  If the car is not used for a while they start nesting there.  This is particularly true of the fall season as they prepare to hibernate.  The intake area is close to the wires that run to the knock sensors.  The rodents eat the rubber on the wires and this shorts out the sensors (or something like that).  The guy to whom I took the car to first, read the computer code for the knock sensors being faulty and changed them without realizing that the problem was caused by the wires.  Thus he replaced the sensors but the did not fix the cause.

Long story short, (well not really but it was a pretty cool story) the Toyota mechanic changed the wires and the sensors and the car now drives like new.  The key portion of history was that I did not use the car for a while during the nesting season, that we had rodents, that the problem was same as that caused when a knock sensor is faulty.  His experience with having seen this before due to working on similar cars in NE Ohio for years helped him recognize the problem.

This is a story I will tell all my trainees.  How a well directed history taken by an experienced clinician can beat multiple tests and technology!

How do you Organize Apps on your Tablet?

As we all multi-task our way through the day, we now have tablets (and smartphones) to increase the fragmentation of work and information.

In the past, I have used 2 browsers to separate work and non-work tasks.  Thus one set of tabs would be opened to the work sharepoint site, Google Docs and work e-mail for example.  The other set would be open to G+, Twitter, FB, iGoogle, etc.

With the introduction of the tablets, we had to find a way to integrate them into our workflow.  Since tablets, especially the early versions did not have an easy way to keep different apps open and toggle between them, the easiest way to approach this was to organize the apps on different screens and in appropriate folders.

One problem with using folders is having to remember which app was in which folder which adds an additional step to what should be an efficient process.
Another problems with touchscreen devices is that if you take too long to flick/swipe your finger across the screen, it is interpreted as a click - which can result in opening an app you did not want to.

So how can one organize one's tablet screens to get the most efficiency?  I think there is no right answer and all of us can learn something from how others do it.  So to start the conversation going, here is how my Motorola Xoom is set up.

I set up my screens based on related tasks.  Thus there is a work screen, a fun screen and a social media screen and there is a widget screen.  A number of apps are present on more than one screen.  There is a space in the center of the screen to flick/swipe your finger without opening an app.  The widget screen is like a dashboard showing the current weather with alerts, unopened e-mails and appointments for the day.  It has too much personal information on the screen to post a screenshot.  The other screen shots are displayed below:
So how do you organize your tablet screens? 

"Work" screen

The Work Screen:

• Google Docs
• Dropbox
• Box
• Evernote
• E-mail
• PowerNote
• Contacts
• Documents to go
• Calendar
• Skype
• Google Voice
• Widgets to lock screen, turn WiFi and Bluetooth on off, short cut to settings
• Downloads shortcut
• Iris (Voice command)
• Google Voice search

Social Screen

The Social Screen:

• Social Networking tools
• Google+
• Twitter and Tweetdeck
• FB
• Path
• Reading Tools/with intention to share
• Google Currents
• Pulse
• News 360
• Google Reader
• Read it Later
• Kindle
• Play Books
• Buffer
• TED
• BBC and NPR
• OverDrive

"Fun" Screen

The Fun Screen:

• Camera and Video Tools
• Camera
• Gallery
• VidTrim
• PicPlz
• Instagram
• Screencut
• Movie Studio
• Skitch
• Travel tools
• Trip Advisor
• FlightAware
• Translate
• Yelp
• Babel Fish Voice
• Local stuff
• Cleveland.com
• WeatherBug
• TV Guide
• Music stuff
• Pandora
• Play Music
• TV stuff
• YouTube
• Netflix
• IntoNow
• Sports stuff
• Endomondo
• ESPN score center