Bookmark Synchronizer Xmarks Hangs Up Their Hats 225
krulgar writes "On January 10, 2011, Xmarks will be closing their doors. A free service being replaced by free software. It would still be nice to have a single way to keep my bookmarks from my work machine in sync with my home machines and my mobile devices without exerting much effort. Xmarks seemed to be the only ones with that clear vision, maybe the replacement tools can grow into this space, but it's still a little sad to see a useful tool wave goodbye."
Re:Fare Thee Well... (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree. The alternatives there provide sync across computers but only for the same browser. I use both Chrome and Firefox extensively and I will greatly miss the ability for (fo)Xmarks to sync my bookmarks, passwords and tabs across all my browsers, regardless of whether its Chrome/Firefox.
For now, I'm using Firefox sync as my primary syncing mechanism and importing into Chrome whenever I update something in Firefox. Its somewhat annoying, but I guess I'll deal. Maybe I'll switch back to using primarily Firefox.
Foxmarks saved my laptop once (Score:5, Interesting)
I am saddened to think of Xmarks (formerly Foxmarks) going under. Their announcement email explained the situation very nicely, however, and one can hardly fault them for calling it quits. They were never able to monetize the data they aggregated, and not enough people would be willing to pay a subscription fee now that all the browsers are providing sync themselves.
I've been their add-on since almost day one; at first they didn't even have a central server to provide the service, it was just an add-on that you could point to an ftp server of your choice. (You can still point it to an ftp or WebDAV server of your choice, so that is one way to keep using it, at least until browser updates break compatibility).
Actually, Foxmarks once got a stolen laptop returned to me. About a month after my house was burglarized, I noticed new bookmarks showing up in my browser on my other machines. The person who "acquired" my laptop never bothered to wipe and reinstall, or even to create a new user account. So every time he bookmarked a URL, Foxmarks would diligently sync it to my other computers. So, from my own machine, I edited all of the bookmarks to point to a redirect page on my server. Once my changes were synced back to my stolen laptop, I was able to record its IP address every time he used one of his bookmarks. I gave that to the police, and another month later they got my laptop back after subpoenaing his ISP to get his address.
So, Foxmarks has a special place in my heart.
Re:hook up Xmarks with apache+webdav (Score:1, Interesting)
I do the same. I also use the webDAV server for my calendars. I just wish the other stuff (history, tabs) worked with my own server like bookmarks/passwords did. I even cobbled together a bookmark cross-importer between my home and work profiles for the specific bookmark folders I wanted shared between them. It's just a JSON file.
Re:What about Delicious? (Score:3, Interesting)
Password syncing is what I really want. For the most part I can remember the websites but remembering the individual password used for each is virtually impossible.
Re:Try Google bookmarks (Score:3, Interesting)
For just syncing bookmarks, this is a great alternative, and it gives you Web access to your bookmarks. Of course, Firefox Sync and Xmarks also optionally synced other information such as history, passwords, etc. but GMarks does look solid.