Zotero is charging for online file storage if you are using their online file synchronization after 100MB. Hmm…I’ll have to say, this is not necessarily a bad thing. If users like me don’t donate enough funds, then we’ll have to pray that they could find some deep pocket donators. Looks like they didn’t find enough, so it’s a good thing to be self-sustaining, then.
I like Zotero, but am not ready to pay that kind of money yet (the price is reasonable, though). I do need to work on multiple computers, though. Since Zotero separates bibliographical data from file attachments, and the bibliography metadata is free (still) to sync, so I use Zotero to sync my bibliography and use DropBox to synchronize the attached files (I store PDF’s). To do that, I uncheck the File Syncing options and configure the Zotero folder under my DropBox under Preferences –> Advanced –> Data Directory Location and use Custom location under DropBox instead of Firefox profile directory.
This has worked perfectly so far. A student once asked me how many I could sync with this configuration. Here is my math: let’s say one PDF file takes 500 K bites of space, with DropBox’s 2 GB free service you can store up to 2,000 files. I believe this should be enough to produce a Ph.D.
One thing the good Zotero people could do, though, is to ask for partners to donate their storage. At a time when storage is so cheap, universities won’t have problem providing this service. With universities participating in this type of services, the user population will increase dramatically. I believe this will create a better revenue later than the current business model. Google, for example, charge for NPO’s larger than 3,000 users. There’s always something we can learn from those “don’t be evil” people.
