Most Usable Bookmark Managers?

stewartj asks: "I finally got sick of manually updating my large bookmarks collection between the computers I use at work and home. I've got a permanent connection at home and a personal webserver running, so I thought I'd install a bookmark manager. Searches on SourceForge and Freshmeat have brought up too many options to consider, so I thought I'd ask Slashdot readers if they have any recommendations for a good web-based bookmark manager? Is there a better solution to making my bookmarks available everywhere (but still keeping them secure)?"

Comments

Here's what I do

[Apreche]

I use phoenix. I put phoenix in a shared folder in windows. I export my bookmarks in html format to another share folder. This gives me my bookmarks everywhere, and here is how.

If I am out of the house and using windows

I access the share via typing \\mypc.mydomain.edu and then launch phoenix and import bookmarks.html

If I am out of the house and using *nix

I access my pc via ssh, launch phoenix using X-forwarding, sftp bookmarks.html over the line and import it.

If I am out of the house using a Mac

It hasn't happened yet, but if I buy one of those titanium thingies (which I would if I had my choice of portable computing) It would have OSX, which can SSH and X-Forward AFAIK.

Problem solved. Same browser everywhere same bookmarks.

Re:Here's what I do

[PD]

What a load of work. Everyone, look up a nice little program called 'unison'. It uses the rsync protocol to keep two directories in sync. It's even transitive. You can be working on client machine A, synchronize with server S, then move to client machine B and synchronize with server S. client A and client B will be synchronized with each other.

I use it on a gigabyte of files in my home dir on my desktop and laptop. It synchronizes in less than 30 seconds on a 128kbit link.

Everything is managed with a configuration file, so you don't need to manually remember what parts need to update and what don't, and where the little bits need to go in the directory tree.

Re:Here's what I do

[PD]

Oh, and I forgot to mention that unison will synchronize using a ssh tunnel. You will be secure.

an idea....

[Anonymous Coward]

get an easy to remember yet reasonably obscure url, put your bookmarks there, and dont tell anyone that url, or link to the url from anywhere (so that google wont find it), or put the page in your robots.txt file.

yeah - it's security through obscurity - but it'll fly.

Roll your own, or use mine.

[funkwater]

I had the same problem a while back and found nothing worth using, so I wrote one using PHP/MySQL in a few hours. It's your standard tree-like listing, where links are in folders. It's wonderful to have one central repository for all links.

It uses only two tables and has one PHP script to add edit/delete bookmarks.

It's also password protected, so you can keep sensitive info in there and not worry. Also, I made a "sidebar" mode for use in Mozilla.

Plans had included a SOAP interface for making XUL clients or something, but I didn't find a need.

If anyone is interested, especially in making it better, I could start a SourceForge project and get it out there. Let me know if there's any takers.

Things that come to mind

[NotoriousQ]

• Run your own secure site (SSL, passwords), and just keep an html page with links. Extremely portable, but you will have to update the page yourself, no real managers. (Although Mozilla/Netscape bookmarks.html might be adequate)
• Keep your profile on a network mountable partition. Problem: may have problems mounting through firewalls and machines not owned by you
• Keep your profile on a USB flash drive keychain.

Note that these do not solve the problem of different formats. Nothing will fix this until some kind of RFC standard is made (probably based on XML). It would be nice, but it is not for real.

Re:Things that come to mind

[darkpurpleblob]

Nothing will fix this until some kind of RFC standard is made (probably based on XML). It would be nice, but it is not for real.

Although not an RFC standard, there is already an XML format for storing bookmarks called XBEL (XML Bookmark Exchange Language). You can find more about it here.

yahoo bookmarks

[zeenixus]

yahoo has an online bookmark "manager" (for lack of a better term). Via my.yahoo.com (and a yahoo id) you can customize the the layout and content. Add the "my bookmarks" panel and then import (upload) your bookmarks to there. It supports netscape (and thus mozilla/phoenix), ie win32 and ie for macs.

I upload my bookmarks every so often manually, although I'm sure with some hacking one can make a script to automate the procedure (maybe someone already has). If you don't "yahoo", I'm sure there are other free online services that have an equivilent.

FOUND IT!

[mildness]

link to unison proggie

Not just Karma whoring, I'm downloading now. (:-{)}

Thanks for the heads-up PD.

Cheers,

Bill