complore is a research collaboration tool targeted at academics. it’s in beta & according to their blog only been around a few months.

there’s ‘my notebook’ which focuses on your research. you can easily bookmark articles (or whatever) you find on the web and it will sit in your notebook. you can also post about conferences or whatever. you can have a bookmark list. you can upload files. it was unclear in the tour and from the feature list/FAQ, just how much control you have over my notebook & keeping some details public & some private.

complore is also a yahoo/google group model. you join complore groups & group admins can set how open they want their membership (ie do people need to be approved?). there are forums where you can talk to others who have joined the particular complore group. as the creators of the software are going for the academic market, the profile is heavy on what your education is. i haven’t seen an academically focused group before (though there is a social networking site, academici, focused in this area).

i’m not sure if i’m missing the connection between the ‘my notebook’ and the groups or maybe there isn’t one as complore seems like 2 separate tools to me.

the collaborative group side is something most people would be familiar with and having features that appeal to the academic market is great. but i can’t see ‘my notebook’ being used for the heavy lifting that academics doing research need. there’s no integration with software such as endnote. and there’s very little chance (IMO) someone will add details to endnote & then copy it all into ‘my notebook’. it also doesn’t go the other way.. if i bookmark a webpage in ‘my notebook’, there doesn’t seem to be a way to push the details into my research software. and i can’t get a reference/source list formatted into harvard (or whichever) style.

from what’s there currently (and i’m sure it will change), ‘my notebook’ feels more like what a high school or maybe undergrad student would use (and find valuable). the group software is definitely more interesting to higher level academics.