Zotero - ideal for academics

Ever wondered what it would be like to be able to do all the following with ONE click?

- "import" the full citation of a book you find on amazon.com or on a university library catalog
- save a copy of a newspaper article onto your laptop, with full citation, of course
- save the URL of an NGO website and attach a related report in pdf format to it
- save a youtube link
- generate a bibliography or a footnote in the writing style of your choice (two clicks here)
- share a centralised bibliography

If you are looking for a tool to "collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources," you should check out  zotero.

Part of the beauty of this free tool/service is that it works from within the open-source Firefox browser, and therefore joyfully strolls across platforms.  Furthermore, you can work "locally" if you are concerned about confidentiality [i.e. you save the information you select exclusively onto your computer] or you have the option of setting up zotero to sync your data with the zotero online server.  The latter gives you the ability to share sources with collaborators, and to conduct your research or prep for class from different computers [e.g. office/home] without worrying about syncing matters.  Zotero looks after this automatically.