Watch a two-minute video of the exciting new release coming early this summer:

http://www.noodletools.com/software/demo2012/

This video is also available at YouTube.

We are very pleased to announce our newest team member, Amy Rogers. She will focus on communication projects, including accessibility and usability, online instruction, marketing and keeping our users informed of new developments.

Amy has a MLIS from the San Jose State University School of Library and Information Science and a B.S. in Economics from Mills College. She has years of web technology experience with businesses and nonprofits.

Amy is a nature lover and supports sustainable living. She loves science fiction and stories that focus on women, as well as classical cello music.

The new version of Internet Explorer (IE9) was released yesterday. One of the 3rd-party javascript libraries (called Ext JS) that we use in NoodleBib has not yet released their IE9-compatibility updates. So if you have (a) upgraded to IE9 and (b) don’t have (and can’t download) an alternative browser like Firefox or Chrome that you can use for now, the temporary solution is to enable “Compatibility view” in IE9.

To turn on “Compatibility view” do the following:
- Turn on the IE “Menu bar” (right-click on the window header, and choose “Menu bar” from the menu)
- Select “Tools” from the Menu Bar and then click “Compatibility view settings…”
- Add noodletools.com to the list of sites there

Now when you navigate to NoodleBib and log in, you should see a checkmark next to “Compatibility view” when you open up the Tools menu again. We’ll update this post once changes are in place to support IE9 in the default mode.

August 2011 Update: We’ve worked out the kinks with IE9, so there should no longer be any need to turn on Compatibility view when using NoodleBib. Please feel free to e-mail if you come across anything that doesn’t look quite right in IE9 (but that works normally in other browsers).

Chicago 16th edition updates are in place for the second semester, as many of you have noticed. Previously, NoodleBib formatting was based on Turabian 7th edition. Turabian has not yet released an update to sync up with CMOS 16th edition changes. Some of the more noticeable changes include:

• When an access date is included as part of a citation to an online source, it is placed before the URL (or DOI).
• Database name and accession number can be cited, if there is no DOI and no stable/direct URL to the content.
• Legal citations follow Bluebook formatting.
• Blog citation formatting changes.

There is a Google Docs API issue which is causing a problem with creating new documents from NoodleBib.

The Google API team has indicated that they are working on a fix:
http://code.google.com/a/google.com/p/apps-api-issues/issues/detail?id=2369
http://code.google.com/a/google.com/p/apps-api-issues/issues/detail?id=2383

It seems to only be affecting Google Apps for Education accounts. In NoodleBib, this issue manifests itself as an error message “Expected response code 200, got 400: Could not convert document.”

We will monitor this and try to obtain more information from the Google API team. Thank you for your patience

UPDATE: Google has reported this fixed as of today (2/2/2011).

Apparently something changed in the Google Docs API on Monday, and two issues have materialized that effect the Google Docs integration in NoodleBib. Some users are getting a message “Expected response code 200, got 400 Could not convert document” when they click on “Paper” in NoodleBib and try to open a document. This seems to happen most often on collaborative projects, where the Google document is being shared. In other cases, a new document is created and opened, instead of the existing one opening.

This is a result of a problem introduced into the Google Docs API this week, and we are currently investigating it to see if there is a way to work around the problem and notify Google of the issue.

If you are seeing this issue, you may want to just access your Google Docs document directly for now (by logging into Google Docs rather than clicking “Paper” in NoodleBib). When we have more news, we will update this post.

UPDATE (11/9/10 @ 11:55 PM PST) – We’ve made some changes this evening that should resolve the issues mentioned above. Please let us know if you are still seeing any problems with this.

We have received clarification from the company that hosts our servers about the latency issues on the mornings of 10/25 and 11/1. They explained that the problem was related to a new Gigabit uplink they were offering to some customers that started causing bandwidth issues on their network. After the problem reoccurred this morning, they removed this new Gigabit uplink offering and have assured us that this will eliminate the problem completely. Our apologies to you for any inconvenience this caused your students on these two mornings.

We’ve added a new screencast tutorial for the Student Collaboration feature in NoodleBib.

The user’s guide has also been updated with a section on the student collaboration feature, as well as information about the Google Docs integration (including support for Google Apps for Education users). If you need it, a PDF version is also available.

NoodleBib now includes support for Google Apps for Education logins. If you are the administrator at a school that uses Google Apps for Education, you can log into your school’s (or district’s) administrative area, click on “NoodleBib Customization” and then specify the domain (the part after the “@”) of your Google Apps for Education logins. Once you’ve changed that, students will have the option to log in using their Google Apps for Education account (although it is still possible for them to use a regular account as well, if they wish to).

We’re excited to announce that NoodleBib has been updated with the much-anticipated project collaboration feature. This feature is currently only available to users under school/district subscriptions (not individual subscribers).

When you open a project and look at the Dashboard, you’ll see the new “Student Collaboration” section there (below “Sharing”). Just click the “Add/remove students” link, enter the NoodleBib IDs of the students you want to work together with, and you’re ready to go. Each student who is collaborating on the project will see the project in his/her own personal folder. The team can all be working on the collaborative project at the same time — changes will be automatically synced up as needed.

We’ll be updating the user’s guide and other documentation this week.