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Bookmark Synchronizer Xmarks Hangs Up Their Hats
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."
Did you ever consider giving them some fucking money for that service?
And nothing of value was lost.
I for one will definitely miss the cross-platform availability of xmarks.
Seems like an external server would be overkill for such a simple task. And think of the opportunities they for data mining. Xmarks can and should be replaced by a very small shell script.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I REALLY loved Xmarks. It was so convenient across my 3 computers.
Was it freeware or did they ask for a donation? I never saw any messages about donating but if I knew they were in trouble I would have give some money. This stinks. Hopefully someone will take over.
This should be a feature built into every web browser anyways. Doesn't Chrome have this built in?
What did Xmarks do that delicious does not?
Might be an opportunity for a micro-payment level subscription service here...
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I've been using them since I started using firefox only and wanted to be able to have the same bookmarks no matter what computer I was logged onto at school. They've provided a great service for years - I'll miss them.
"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."
Try Opera...
I used Xmarks for a little while, but their client was way way too intrusive; I ended up turning it off because I just didn't like its nagging (I think it had saved the wrong password or something).
Also, I never understood why my data had to go through their servers - wouldn't it be good enough to just have multiple syncing computers on at the same time? I can see using their servers for scheduling, but actually storing the data? And then there's the super creepy option of saving your passwords - I'm not even sure why they offered that one.
Opera lets you sync your bookmarks.
Smivs on the intertubes!
i used this on like 5 computers... DAMNIT
If you can't write an online bookmark system in an afternoon, hand in your geek card and GTFO!
I've been using Xmarks since they were Foxmarks and it's the only tool out there that syncs multiple browsers. It's really handy when you have a folder full of client URL's and you need to check them on multiple browsers and operating systems. I'd gladly have paid for the service - but they never asked or proposed it. Sure some people would have balked and left, but those that stayed could have supported your business. I refuse to give my bookmark data to Google and I really just don't trust anyone else that is associated with a search engine or browser developer.
Gmarks for Firefox lets you sync your google bookmarks! It's awesome! 'nuff said.
Tools->Options->Personal Stuff->Sync
Enter your gmail account, choose if you want bookmarks, preferences, extensions etc.
All done. Works.
/queue omggoogleknowsmybookmarks crowd
You could also use Firefox Sync. It used to be called, Mozilla Weave and was an add-on, which will not be included in Firefox 4 proper.
With Xmarks, they would be able to read your bookmarks, etc. With Firefox Sync everything that is stored/transfered is encrypted.
It is even possible to setup your own 'server', have a look for "Weave Minimal Server", so you don't have to depend on Mozilla or anyone else.
New things are always on the horizon
I use Gmarks (Firefox extension) for this. Works pretty well if you don't mind the combination of Firefox and Google.
Log in or piss off.
It's sad that they've reached the point of having to shut down, but i've got to say that at least they've handled the situation with a lot of class. They're giving their users several months warning rather than just shutting down the servers overnight, and when they did market research that indicated there wouldn't be enough demand for a subscription version to sustain them they just decided not to offer one and shut down gracefully. As opposed to what seems to be the more common tactic of convincing their biggest supporters to hand over money for a little while and then having to shut down anyways, and then figure out how to do refunds or just tell everyone to go suck it.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Why didn't the developers ask to be paid for their service? I love their toolbar and bookmark synching and would gladly pay a yearly fee for it.. $10/$15 year seems fair. :)
Goddammit always the fucking greedy bastards want to make money on the internet !! If you want to make money go on tour, sell t-shirts, or do parties !! This is just more shit from all the fucking greedy bastards !!
There are always other options for what you need done. It's one of the reasons that the internet so great and it's also why a service like Xmarks can shut down with very little inconvenience for its users.
It's exactly what it looks like
Open Gmail.
Start new message.
Paste in links.
Save as Draft.
Open and update from home or work.
You guys use a service to sync your bookmarks? I thought the slashdot crowd had privacy concerns over such stuff. Especially when the manual sync is just an scp command away...
Personally, I have a different set of bookmarks at work than at home and the only time I would sync (via the aforementioned scp command) would be after setting up a new machine. But the last couple of years or so I have stopped copying over my old bookmarks to new machines. My favorite sites come up by typing the first couple of characters and I bookmark only the few pages I need that don't come up in the first page of google results, which I usually won't need any longer by the time I switch to a new machine (ok, they still stay in a backup somewhere)...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Step 2 ?????
That's the problem here.
"A REAL computer has ONE speed and the only powersaving it permits is when you pull the power leads out of the back!"
For me the killing feature is to sync to your own webdav or ftp server. I don't like to hand over all my personal stuff to Google or any other and use BYO server functionality.
So will that still work?
they synch nicely
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
And I also use it for other things, like sending links to friends.
Xmarks can be configured to use a local FTP server instead of the Xmarks server.
Most of the complaints I read are solved by RTFM and better config choices.
Sad to see Xmarks go.
I am really upset see this go I been using this for the last few years such a great service. I hope all the workers and owners find jobs at Mozilla, Opera or Google there experience will be a big benefit to there products.
http://www.thetechnologygeek.org
If you happen to have your own apache server handy, just setup up a personal server with Xmarks, it works beautifully (over https as well). I'm using this combination for quite some time now, with great satisfaction and independence. As stated above, I also don't want to store my private stuff on third party storage.
Syncs perfectly from machine to machine, typed URL history, bookmarks, speed dial setup, search engine preferences (& search engine searches), and notes (though I don't use this).
Oh and it does this to my cellphone too.
Now above isn't much help if you need to use firefox specific addons... But no, scripts still don't count people; Chrome and Opera both run do them natively where firefox requires an addon to do it. (Repeated because too many don't realize this)
Silly human, people would never have used it if they had to PAY for it because it is on the web. Everyone know that everything on the web is free or should be free.
Xmarks and Adblock are the two plugins I will instantly install on a new browser (well the latter for Firefox). Simple, reliable, cross-browser, does passwords as well as bookmarks, and over the years have shown they have no intention of misusing my personal information.
A fantastic plugin that has greatly improved my browsing enjoyment. It will be sorely missed.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
I imagine that some smart people will make Sync plugins for other browsers.
J'aime mieux les méchants que les imbéciles, parce qu'ils se reposent. -- Alexandre Dumas
Um
Bookmarks are so passe. I've stopped using Bookmarks because to find something I use Google, and if Google finds something for me, then it can find it again for me. Most of the linked articles off websites are transient or just plain timely (one time) pieces of info. Seriously, I've pretty much stopped using bookmarks and just use Google to find what I need.
And the great thing, it is always available, even on my phone!!!
I don't use cache or password remembering features because that is just plain stupid in today's world of dynamic content and security concerns (Firefox plaintext passwords?? ). This service offered me nothing I need.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Since they are shutting down the company, are they planning on releasing the code under GPL or some other license for others to make use of it?
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Not everything can be monetized, I suppose. I'm certainly not blameless; I disabled their kinda creepy google shenanigans.
Hopefully they'll release the plugin source, if they haven't already, so we can continue with our own servers.
Agreed. A dollar per month was what I was thinking.
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.
If fate makes you a motorcycle, you become a motorcycle.
I really like the Google bookmark service.
https://www.google.com/bookmarks/l
Uses labels like gmail, and has browser addons.
FF:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2888/
It is built into chrome
Safari:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/901411/goggles_use_google_bookmarks_with_safari.html?cat=15
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I used XMarks back when it was called FoxMarks! Get off my lawn!
But seriously, I thought it had a way to use a private server for storing the synchronization file?
I've since moved to Chrome which has it built in, as does Opera so a coworker tells me.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
It doesn't do tab syncing, but it certainly does bookmark syncing, which seems to be what you really need. As far as I can tell it supports all the major browsers, too.
I'd think some enterprising geek could use Dropbox as a substitute.
Xmarks has also additional functionality: worldwide bookmarked content was wisible in google hits. It was a great enhancement to search, I'm gonna miss this as much as real life cross-browser bookmarking.
In the blog post they do talk about how they tried to monetize this data. Nothing proved to make a profit...
You could set your browser prefs to save their bookmarks to Dropbox, and then they'd be the same everywhere.
antipaucity
I've been using a web browser since 1993, both at home and at work.
I have always had lots of bookmarks and usually want the same set at home and at work. It's always been a pain to combine them without duplicating or losing bookmarks. I used to use my bookmarks.html as my home page.
I've gone from Mosaic to Netscape to Mozilla to Firefox. I tried external sites like delicious but didn't like how it got brought back to my browser. I tried scripts that would merge 2 copies into a master copy.
Foxmarks was the 1st system that did what I wanted. It even helped when I tried Chrome. I love saving a bookmark at work and finding it at home.
I don't want to have to sync anything else. I use different extensions, cookies, logins, etc at home/work. Work has a censoring proxy that blocks some sites. I don't use facebook, youtube, etc at work because they monitor for "excessive usage". I can wait until I get home in any event. I certainly don't want any tabes brought back to work.
The next thing I want to find is a bookmark cleaner to clean out dead links. Some of my book marks might be for a device I power on in summer and off in winter every year and I want to keep those even if they go off the network.
see a nice video at work -> bookmark and watch at home
:D
:/
see an interesting article or something you want to read -> bookmark and read at home
see anything you want to keep -> bookmark it and use the same bookmarks on every computer
dual boot into Windows -> use the same bookmarks
setup a new computer -> go to xmarks.com, login and you have all your bookmarks in ~1min
I thought about Opera for everything and use their service then. Apparently their browser is most stable if it comes to Javascript etc. the big xulrunner package is annoying anyway
because of XMarks, I now have to decide which browser to use
from Xmarks blog
"UPDATE: We’ve set up a Pledgebank page where you can sign up if you’re willing to pay at least $10 a year for Xmarks. No credit card is required, but please only pledge if you are genuinely willing and able to pay:
www.pledgebank.com/XmarksPremium "
There may be hope after all.
Good riddance.
Once they moved beyond Bookmark syncing and in to ratings, and other junk, I told them to take a hike and moved on. I'm glad to see others joined me.