Scientists following the advent of online tools for collaboration may soon be adding Google Wave to their toolbelt. One blogger describes the still-in-development open-source project as “email on steroids” with wiki and instant-messaging functions rolled in. The application's demo at the SciFoo '09 meeting last month at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, generated excitement among scientists about using it to author papers collaboratively or even for online peer review (see http://tinyurl.com/mcovhf and http://tinyurl.com/l97tns).

Now, Nature Network's product development manager, Euan Adie, notes that a new virtual lab assistant, Igor, for retrieving those pesky citations has been added. On Nature's Nascent web technology blog, Adie shows how the prototype Igor robot, an automated participant in a Wave discussion, works (http://tinyurl.com/lshvnd). While writing a document, typing a simple command will send Igor scurrying off to find the appropriate citation in PubMed Central or another database, and insert it. The robot also reorders citations as you add or delete them.