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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."
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?
Did you ever consider giving them some fucking money for that service?
Did they ever consider charging for it?
Might be an opportunity for a micro-payment level subscription service here...
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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.
Opera lets you sync your bookmarks.
Each of the browsers (sans IE I believe) have their own syncing. The real benefit to xmarks was being able to sync across all the browsers.
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
I remember when they changed from "Foxmarks" to "Xmarks" and introduced password sync. They actually asked for input on whether users would actually use the password sync feature. I responded, essentially by telling they they're out of their fscking minds to offer such a sketchy feature, and no, I would not be using it.
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
This is why you hand out cash to random people... in the hopes that you will help a future beggar.
Remember to maintain your supply of
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. :)
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)...
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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?
IE bookmarks can automatically be synced with Windows Live Sync (beta).
I stand corrected. However, the main point still stands. None of these will sync to another browser.
they synch nicely
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
"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...
Pity he was snide in his post, he does have a point. Opera has had this as an integrated feature for years. It also synchronizes your speed-dial and and your 'notes', which are like bookmarks but are organized by the section of text you highlight. Very handy. I especially like this feature for keeping useful snippets of Python around.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
That's my biggest gripe. I'm a geek and I can setup my 0wn "server". I don't trust ANYONE with my browser history, passwords, etc. (How much data mining did they do on what was saved and will that be getting sold off after they "close" ?)
UPS Sucks
And I also use it for other things, like sending links to friends.
Except to all the people who used it, like me.
It would be a lot more complicated to have a system without a central server. It wouldn't work for everybody, for one thing, because they would always need to have some combination of systems up. If you only have two, one would always have to be up when the other was activated. A central server pretty much eliminates the problem of ISP outages (because you aren't using your bookmarks if the internet is out). You would need to have firewalls open and ports forwarded to allow for direct transfers between computers.
When you consider all of that, storing things server-side is really the best way to make it usable by a large number of people.
Also, keeping the stuff server-side allows you to use the service as a zero-effort backup, which I've found handy in the past.
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.
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.
I stand corrected. However, the main point still stands. None of these will sync to another browser.
What kind of situation calls for this?
(I'm not asking to argue, I'm curious if I'm likely to ever encounter it...)
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
what was saved and will that be getting sold off after they "close" ?)
I've been using their service for a while, including password saves on pretty much everything but banking sites (so email, amazon, newegg, etc) with no issues. From one of their pages on the closing, http://www.xmarks.com/about/shutdown :
Privacy and Your Data We understand that you have entrusted us with the task of storing your personal browser data and we take that responsibility very seriously. * We will never sell or release your personal data, and we will make sure to delete all user data once the Xmarks service shuts down. * If you'd like to take immediate action, click here to immediately delete your account and user data. (Make sure you have all your data first!)
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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I use firefox and chrome on my PC, and firefox and safari on mac. I also test in ie. When you use multiple browsers, it's convenient to have the usual bookmarks available on them.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Outside of web-testing have you encountered it? Like a workplace that only allows certain browsers?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly. Also, some browsers do some things better than others.
I admit, most of the time I use Firefox, but there are some occasions to use other browsers depending on the machine you are using.
Also, it was nice to have the option to go to the xmarks site, for those times I am at a site for a few minutes, and need a link I found last week.
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.
http://xkcd.com/792/
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Agreed. A dollar per month was what I was thinking.
Did you ever consider giving them some fucking money for that service?
Did they ever consider charging for it?
Yes, actually, I would pay a subscription for this, I think it would be worth about $5/month (to me) to keep me from synchronizing manually. If there were another provider (or Xmarks) that would offer this, I would subscribe. Unfortunately, I was not part of their marketing analysis, and I have to trust that their sample size included others that did indicate this as well.
Thank you for your well-considered (if inconsiderate) question.
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 also used this, 2 home computers and 2 work computers all will synced bookmarks worked great... I could bookmark a site at home that might be useful for work and have it waiting for me when I fired up that machine...
really sad to see this go...
Collector's Edition
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
(stolen from DaBum) I am dyslexia of borg - your ass will be laminated.
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!
Yes. At work, the only authorized web browsers are IE6 and FF 3.6.
At home, where I run a Mac, I used Safari, and more and more recently, Chrome.
Being able to sync bookmarks from home to work would be terribly useful, and presently involves a lot of mucking around with mailing exported HTML files back and forth to keep things in sync.
I'm working on getting them to let me install Chrome here, which would help... but I keep hearing the old "but it could be insecure, and nobody above me has approved it," argument.
Use the same browser across all those machines and you will have the same functionality. Xmarks was only really good at syncing across browsers, which is a pretty niche market when you get down to it. Chrome, FF and even IE have built in bookmark syncing.
Can anyone tell me why 99% of
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.
At work I can't use chrome 'cause its not installed. So its Firefox. At home, my netbook just lags with firefox, so I use Chrome.
In this situation, Xmarks was the only option I had to keep both browsers synchronized (Firefox at work, Chrome on the netbook)
-- dnl
Indeed, I don't even trust my browser to store that information, let alone somebody else's server. I personally use Keepass and KeepassX to do that for me.
I use Firefox at home, because I'm used to it.
Opera on my notebook, because it's more lightweight and works faster on non-broadband connections.
I have to use IE at work (and yes, that sucks).
I like to have a look at what Chrome is doing every once in a while.
Just because you stick to one browser only doesn't mean that there are no reasons for other people to work differently.
I started using it before most browsers had it built in (back when it was called foxmarks instead of Xmarks and only worked on the one browser). This is of course the drawback to building a free product that adds functionality to another free product, if it is good the product your adding to will internalize the functionality rendering your product useless.
Yep, I have some internal corporate sites that only can use IE. For the rest I use FF. Having a cross browser is great for that.
This would not be an issue though if we still had that gem called IE Tab add-on for FF.
FF native sync would be fine for those forced to use IE sometimes if they could bring back that IE Tab add-on. I have to use IE for some sites at work and that used to work great while never leaving my FF window.
While I do feel bad that Opera does tons of innovation and the other browsers then take those ideas, I've never liked Opera, I just cant get used to using it. Also, bookmarks and other things are synced between machines in many browsers, however Xmarks syncs multiple browsers. For example, we like having the same shared bookmarks, but my wife tends to use Chrome while I tend to use Firefox. Xmarks fixes this for us. Also, I only want to sync some of the bookmarks from our home computer with my work computer and vice-versa. Xmarks profiles fixes this. I'm normally a cheap-ass, but I would pay to keep using Xmarks for all the benefit it gives us.
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
Just because you stick to one browser only doesn't mean that there are no reasons for other people to work differently.
Actually I don't stick to just one browser, which is why I was asking. I run Opera, FF, and Chrome (Safari, too, if you count my phone) and haven't encountered a big need for a service like that. That's why I asked questions to learn more instead of making a big karma-posing speech about how whatever method I use is better.
Cool your jets, hotshot. This is one instance of you blazing forward on a bad assumption. Next time you could get zinged.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Have you tried finding a 'portable' version of your favorite browser, or is it one of those things where they won't let you run it anyway?
(Xmarks is a better solution, but since it's going bye-bye I thought I'd offer that suggestion if it hasn't crossed your path yet.)
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I use the password sync feature, but I also use my own server on the backend. I probably wouldn't use it if I'd ever used their servers.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
True enough. Perhaps they should have appealed to the code team(s) of some of those free products and tried to become developers of the core products themselves? If you can write an add on that is good enough to be incorporated into the software, there's a good chance there would be room on the development team for you, at least in my books.
Can anyone tell me why 99% of
Okay, then how exactly does one sync bookmarks WITHOUT sending them to a third party? I have been using FEBE for this but if there is a better way I'm open for suggestions but I will NOT send my bookmarks to some company I have no prior relationship with. I just wants a simple way to sync bookmarks over a LAN that I control without having to give my data to anyone else. Call me paranoid but I like keeping my data private and you can learn too much about a person by data mining their bookmarks. So any non privacy destroying suggestions?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
At work it's basically an old Firefox: I'm stuck with and OLD kernel, so its very hard to run anything that is up-to-date.
At home, I'm stuck with chrome: the main problem is the netbook, because firefox just lags around when I go to javascript-heavy pages (like gmail).
Besides those two, there is still my desktop, wich runs Windows and Linux and have both browsers installed.
I am currently evaluating delicious.com with some high hopes...
-- dnl
Or trying being a software developer who has to test stuff across a wide selection of browsers. Or in a company that will not let you use anything but their default browser, which happens not to be the browser you use at home. Xmarks has its place, or it had its place.
Or trying being a software developer who has to test stuff across a wide selection of browsers. Or in a company that will not let you use anything but their default browser, which happens not to be the browser you use at home. Xmarks has its place, or it had its place.
Any company that blocks you from using your own software probably extends that block to software addons and plugins.
Funnily enough I've worked at two companies that let you install plugins into the browser, but you can't install any 'full' programs without prior approval. But you are right, most companies probably would not allow for that.
FF native sync would be fine for those forced to use IE sometimes if they could bring back that IE Tab add-on.
I don't know that IE Tab ever left, although it has changed names.
Call me paranoid but I like keeping my data private and you can learn too much about a person by data mining their bookmarks. So any non privacy destroying suggestions?
Although the info might be out of date, Foxmarks had instructions on how to use your own server.
Use the same browser across all those machines and you will have the same functionality. Xmarks was only really good at syncing across browsers, which is a pretty niche market when you get down to it.
One of the best features of Xmarks was "profiles", which is not a feature of Firefox Sync.
Basically, profiles allowed you to have all of your bookmarks from all machines stored on the server, but then pick which folders are part of the sync for a specific machine. This allowed me to keep my "only at work" (i.e., private Intranet) bookmarks in sync across all the work machines I use, but never see those bookmarks at home (or vice-versa).
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.
It would be a lot more complicated to have a system without a central server.
You can always encrypt your data with a decent cipher and upload onto Freenet.
Xmarks was not really a plugin for IE. You don't need an 'IE plugin' to manage IE bookmarks, they're filesystem objects. Xmarks IE sync was just a program that edited them, and didn't really need an special permissions.
I always thought they missed out on having a program that does that that doesn't even require installation...put it on a flash drive, and it could keep a directory of 'Favorites' in sync. Regardless of whether or not that's the directory that shows up in IE, you can still double-click them in Windows and they open in the default browser.
In fact, I use my Start Menu's favorite list sometimes even though I use Firefox...I can add a bookmark in IE, and it makes the round trip through Xmarks and ends up in my Favorite list.
Guess I have to figure out some other way.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I use Chrome on Windows and Firefox on Ubuntu, by preference.
I prefer Chrome, but I have some issues with it in Ubuntu. If those get solved (or if they just stop affecting ME) then I would switch to Chrome completely and would have no need for cross-browser syncing.
with weave, you can set up your own server, but even if you don't, your data is gpg encrypted on the mozilla server
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Screw you, I used this heavily to sync bookmarks across 6 different systems. It was the only one that would sync Firefox for my linux desktop and work laptop, my work xp machine which needs to use IE and Chrome by standards and Safari on my personal macbook so that I could keep my book marks sync'd to my iPhone and iPad.
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
That is the biggest problem with Firefox, it doesn't work with policies. Otherwise there might be many more companies running Firefox instead of IE.
And if it is just for sake of "running properly", check here for new Javascript compatibility: http://sputnik.googlelabs.com/
First place Opera, followed by FF and Chrome, then IE with 6 time more errors than Opera -.-