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Archive for the ‘Papers for iPhone’ Category

Papers Springing into the Future

Monday, November 5th, 2012
Party

A little more than 5 years ago Papers was born in between Alex’s PhD and postdoc. It was a simple application designed to do one thing very well: organize your scientific PDFs, in a way very similar to how iTunes organizes your music files. But like iTunes, we have steadily grown Papers to do much more. And with each new version of the program, we realize how much more we could do, and what potential Papers has to help researchers even more.

But there is only so much a small team like ours can do, and a day really only has 24 hours. It hurts having to say no to really good ideas, or having to delay new releases when other things demand priority.

With the increasing user base, the demands on our small team continue to grow. We have been committed to excellence in development and support for Papers, and we have many ambitious plans for the future. The reality is that the enthusiasm for Papers from the community at times catches up with us, forcing us to look for ways to improve the way we handle support and develop new features.

While we were not looking for a partner, an opportunity arose where we could get the support we need to continue to meet the high expectations we have for Papers. We embraced this opportunity, and we are very excited to announce that Papers is taking a big leap into the future!

We are becoming part of the Springer family.

The fit was a natural one, and we believe that by becoming part of Springer we will be able to offer our users so much more: we can take Papers to the next level, but much faster than on our own. Backed by the second largest scientific publisher we will be able to add features quicker, react faster, provide better support, and open up a realm of new possibilities.

The Mekentosj team will remain in charge of Papers, and continue to develop Papers for each of the platforms we currently support: Mac, PC, and iOS. We will continue to bring you updates, new features, and support. All with the same dedication and excitement you are used to getting from us.

You may still have some questions after reading this news. We are happy to answer them at any time, and you email us. However, your question may already be answered in this Q&A we prepared related to this news.

We are excited about the future of Papers, and we believe that with this new chapter we are able to bring you an even better experience.

~ The Mekentosj Team

Back to school with Papers for iOS

Sunday, September 2nd, 2012

We get it, being a student is tough. To help you out a little bit in the new school year, we are offering Papers for iOS at a reduced price, for one week only. Starting tomorrow, September 3rd, you can purchase Papers for only $9.99. The back to school sale is in effect until September 9th, so make sure you do not miss it! Of course, even if you are not a student you can still make use of the sale to get Papers on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch.

Papers for iOS makes your journal articles and other PDFs mobile. You can install Papers on all your iOS devices. Wherever life takes you, your library can come with you. Next time you attend a conference and want to share an article with a colleague, it will be right at your fingertips. Read on the train or bus, highlight important sections in class, take notes, you name it! Papers makes it easy to catch up on your reading anywhere, anytime. When reading becomes more accessible, it is also more fun.

Reading is really just the beginning. Papers for iOS features an elaborate set of professional tools to annotate, expand, and organize your library. You can work on your iPad, sync your library with your Mac, and continue working. All your notes and highlights, or the organizing you have done on your iPad is transferred to your Mac and your libraries stay up to date. At this time, Papers for iOS does not yet sync with Papers for Windows, but we are working on it. Regardless, many users choose Papers for iOS as a standalone app and it is not necessary to have the desktop version to make use of all the features in Papers for iOS.

Whether you are reading for fun or work, your articles and PDFs appear crystal clear on the retina displays on the new iPad. Papers is fully compatible and provides you with high resolution, laser sharp, full screen reading.

Want to see Papers for iOS in action first? Take a look at the introduction video below. It introduces you to some of the features in Papers for iOS, and we invite you to explore all the other features yourself.

Papers for iOS is available from the iTunes store.

Enjoy using Papers!

Papers on the big screen

Friday, March 16th, 2012

We’re absolutely thrilled with the arrival of the new iPad and its super high-resolution retina display. When we started Papers for iPhone back in the days we always secretly hoped that Apple would make a tablet, as that would be perfect for reading your articles. So when the iPad was introduced it was Christmas all over again for us and we couldn’t scramble fast enough to fully support it.

A few months ago the same feeling returned when the rumor-mill started to talk about a new iPad that would have a high-resolution retina display, just like the iPhone4. The secret hoping that this would be true started again as it would be nothing but spectacular for an app like Papers, having seen the difference on the iPhone already. When the rumors became more assertive over the last few weeks we knew it was time to start preparing for the big day.

We’re very pleased to announce that on this iPad launch day we also introduce an update for Papers for iOS that is full compatible with the new iPad, taking full advantage of the retina display. Seeing is believing, you will be blown away by the difference this makes in reading your articles, figures are much more vivid and text is razor sharp and much more pleasant to read. We’ve uploaded two screenshots that give you an idea of the sheer size of the Retina display.

To celebrate the launch of the new iPad you will be able to buy Papers for iOS for only $9.99 from the iTunes app store for the next 5 days. There’s no better time to join the revolution and download Papers for iPad. Enjoy!

Papers for iOS 1.9.3 in the App Store

Tuesday, February 1st, 2011

Hot on the heels of 1.9.2, a new update to Papers for iOS is now available on the App Store. Version 1.9.3 introduces support for iOS 4.3, fixes a number of bugs, and improves scrolling in the landscape mode. The most visible change that iPhone users will see is the new address bar, and the “Login/Authenticate” button which you can access by tapping the address bar (screenshots below). This feature allows you to force loading a web page with EZProxy.

The new browser address bar and "Login/Authenticate" on iPhone

See below for a full list of changes. Hope you enjoy Papers for iOS 1.9.3!

What’s new

  • Added iOS 4.3 compatibility.
  • Added the Login/Authenticate function also to the iPhone (previously only on the iPad).
  • Faster scrolling when viewing papers in the landscape mode.
  • Searching from Scholar, ACM and IEEE Xplore fixed.
  • Do not use EZProxy when browsing the Mekentosj support website.
  • Improved stability with more PDFs which do not conform to the PDF file format specification.
  • Dropbox / iDisk import instructions layout improved for iPad users.

Papers for iOS 1.9.2 & Papers for Mac 1.9.7

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

We’re happy to announce the availability of Papers for iOS 1.9.2 in the App Store! This newest release introduces some exciting new features which we thought you might want to see in action. Namely, we’ve added support for PDF hyperlinks, as well as for Table of Contents and improved the workflow with library proxies. Papers for Mac has also been updated to version 1.9.7.

PDF hyperlinks

Many research papers and book PDFs include links within the document, and links to outside resources. New to Papers for iPad 1.9.2, you can follow these links simply by tapping on them, for instance to jump to a figure that is referenced in the text, or to the bibliography. You can also follow links to outside documents. In the below screenshot, the “Supplemental Materials and Methods” link has just been tapped. Papers lets you view the linked supplemental material web page link either in Safari, or directly within the app. Links can also point to other research papers, and Papers naturally creates you a new reference entry for each link you follow, and lets you download the PDF for it similarly as you are used to. Navigating research literature has never been this easy!

Hyperlink support in Papers for iPad

Table of Contents

Some PDF documents also include a Table of Contents. New to version 1.9.2, you can access it using Papers (see screenshot below). A “Go to Page” function is now also included.

PDF Table of Contents supported in Papers for iPad 1.9.2

Login / Authenticate

Accessing journals that require authentication can be tricky when you’re outside an institutional network which grants you access to content. Sometimes you come across research paper links that cannot be recognised by your library proxy. We now improve your workflow in these situations by introducing a “Login / Authenticate” function, similar to what is already available in Papers for Mac. The two screenshots below demonstrate this new function:

Login / Authenticate (before)

After tapping the “Login/Authenticate” button and entering your username and password for the proxy, you can get access to the full-text PDF (tap the PDF link to download the document):

Login / Authenticate (after)

Release notes

You’ll find a complete change log below, including both new features and bug fixes. If you come across any issues, please contact us.

New features:

  • Hyperlink support for PDFs: follow links in the document, or to outside URLs such as web pages or other publications.
  • Table of Contents support for PDFs. You’ll find it as a tab in the Bookmarks view.
  • A “Go to page” function included in the Table of Contents tab.
  • Added a “Login/Authenticate” option in the address bar, which lets you reload the current page through the EZProxy. This issimilar to the Login/Authenticate function in Papers for Mac.
  • You can log into iDisk using either your username or email address.

Other improvements from version 1.9.1:

  • Improved stability and performance with large PDFs.
  • Improved stability with PDFs which do not conform strictly to the specification.
  • Improved document loading speed.- Settings view: keyboard handling improved such that the EZProxy URL field is shown correctly.
  • Fixed the issue whereby the navigation bar would disappear after syncing on the iPad.- Correct handling of text encoding in Google Scholar results: languages with such as Russian, Korean.

Papers for Mac has also been updated to Version 1.9.7!

Papers for iOS 1.9, a new look and feel

Monday, December 6th, 2010

Today we are very happy to release the version 1.9 of Papers for iPad, and iPhone. This update improves the app in a number ways, ranging from a fresh look and feel, Dropbox support, importing and exporting of annotated PDFs, and all-around stability improvements. We really hope you enjoy using it! Below you can read more about what’s new, and also about what’s coming next.

I would like to take the opportunity to thank Matias and congratulate him with his first mekentosj release. Matias has worked very hard to get all the stuff below in your hands as quickly as he could after he joined in September. After updating to version 1.9 I hope you will agree that he has done a killer job, and we’re sure that this will only be the beginning!

New improved look & feel.

Papers for iOS 1.9 introduces a new, exciting look & feel. Our goal wasn’t just to make Papers prettier for you. Whether you’re reading a paper, browsing your library, Google Scholar search results, or a journal website for a paper, we wanted to give you more space on the screen to concentrate on what you’re doing, both on the iPad and on the iPhone.

Papers for iOS

The most apparent visual change on the iPad is the new sidebar which you can hide by tapping anywhere on the screen. You can simply tap again to bring the sidebar back into view with its navigation, bookmark and sharing controls. The landscape viewing mode on the iPad has also been improved, allowing you to read your papers with a more natural vertical scrolling mode.

Importing papers to your library from Dropbox or iDisk.

You can import papers to your library from either Dropbox or iDisk volumes. Go to “Import papers”, then choose either your Dropbox or iDisk account, log in and browse to the PDF you want to import. We have received a lot of requests for this feature, so we really hope you enjoy it!

Improved PDF annotation support in Papers for iPad

PDF highlighting support has been extended to a far larger range of PDFs in Papers 1.9, so if you previously had problems highlighting PDFs, now might be a good time to try again. Highlights are also merged more intelligently, so you shouldn’t see partial words being highlighted anymore.

One highly requested annotation feature which we’ve added in 1.9 is the ability to import highlights and notes made in other applications to Papers for iPad. Exporting annotated PDFs from Papers is also now possible.

We continue to extend the annotation support in Papers, so stay tuned for further improvements coming your way!

A number of other changes have also made it to version 1.9:

  • All-around stability improvements.
  • Reading password protected PDFs. Passwords for PDFs that you have opened are stored securely in your keychain, so you only have to enter them once.
  • Papers remembers the last opened page in all the papers in your library, not just the last one you had open.
  • Papers remembers the last search keyword in your library.
  • A “Locate with Google” was button introduced to help finding PDFs for reference entries which are missing one.
  • Ability to download papers from IEEE has been restored.
  • Ability to download papers from JSTOR has been restored.
  • Syncing is more reliable. In particular, importing papers from Mail or iTunes functions more reliably.
  • iOS 4.2 support: AirPrint and background applications.


Available via iTunes now

Papers for iOS 1.9 is a free update for existing users, available via iTunes now.
For more info and screenshots see http://news.papersapp.com/papers/ipad

What’s next?

Keeping your Papers library in sync between your Mac and iPad,  iPhone or iPod Touch is one of the key features of the software which we build. Being able to sync is also a substantial technical challenge. There is much room for improvement in how Papers currently handles syncing, and we are indeed already working on a new syncing implementation which we really want to get right. The new syncing functionality which will arrive in a further update should resolve many of the issues that you might have experienced.

In addition to Papers for iOS 1.9, we have also released Papers for Mac 1.9.6, a bugfix release of our popular Mac version of Papers Download from here…

Papers for iOS update time!

Friday, July 23rd, 2010

This is the update everybody has been asking for. In the past 3 months since its release we have been blown away by the reactions we have received on Papers for iPad, but one thing was clear, you wanted the ability to highlight text passages and leave notes on the PDFs. And from today that’s exactly what you can do. It’s intuitive and simple and now makes reading an even better experience on the iPad.

Simply tap and drag to select a piece of text and tap highlight, that’s all there is to it. Highlighting can be very accurate thanks to the loupe that pops up while you drag and text selection is also column-aware. We also allow you to copy the text to the clipboard. In addition you can tap and hold anywhere on the page for a second and a sticky-note pops up to type away. After you’re done a red pin will indicate the location of the note.

Papers for iPhone

But also for iPhone owners there’s exciting news, Papers is now full optimized for iOS4. It supports fast application switching, as well as the razor sharp retina display of the iPhone4. PDFs never looked this good, and even on the relatively small screen they’re a joy to read.

If you already own Papers for iOS this is a must-have update, now available from iTunes. And if you don’t, then it’s time to head over to the app store!

For more information see the Papers for iPad and Papers for iPhone web pages.

Rewind 2009: Papers for iPhone 1.3

Friday, January 8th, 2010

Welcome to a new decade! It’s hard to believe what has all happened in the past 10 years; what has started completely from scratch as a very small hobby in 2001, culminated in an award winning and thriving software company. And what better way to finish the year than discovering that Papers for iPhone was choosen among the 30 best iPhone Apps of 2009 in the UK iTunes store! A big thanks to everybody for making this app such a success!

Papers for iPhone among the 30 best iPhone apps of 2009

Papers for iPhone ranked among the 30 best iPhone apps of 2009



Speaking of which, we’re also very pleased to announce the immediate availability of Papers for iPhone 1.3, you can now download the update via iTunes. In version 1.3 we not only fixed the recently changed Google Scholar search engine*, but perhaps even more importantly, we significantly improved the PDF viewer inside Papers for iPhone. Text is rendered much sharper and the entire reading experience is more robust and speedier.

Best of all, Papers for iPhone 1.3 is just the beginning, we have a lot more exciting new releases lined up for 2010, we can’t wait to show you, stay tuned!

The mekentosj team

*) an update for the Mac version of Papers is also available, see here for more information.

Papers for iPhone update

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

A fresh update to Papers for iPhone is now available on the iTunes App Store.

Papers for iPhone is now compliant with the new iPhone OS 3.0 (fixing the PDF viewing problems some people were experiencing), but also has a fantastic new feature: in-app emailing.

You can now email an article to a friend or group of colleagues without leaving Papers. Just select your article and go to ‘Share by email’ to compose and send a new message without skipping a beat.

Check out Papers for iPhone on the iTunes App Store.

This update is free to all existing users. Just check for updates from iTunes or visit the App Store from your iPhone or iPod Touch to update to version 1.2. Of course, just to be sure that everything goes smoothly, you can make use of the free library backup service.