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Xmarks May Not Be Dead After All
gatorfan sends word that Xmarks, which announced its upcoming closure a few days back, may not be so dead after all. The outcry from people willing to pay for the service was so loud that the company has now posted a pledge that users can sign if they are willing to pay for the service, and they say that they have fielded inquiries from several organizations who might be willing to buy the company's assets and keep the service going.
Your comment leads me to believe that you've never used it. For a substantial period of time it was the only sync app (which you would know if you read the original XMarks article), and it became quite popular. It's true that there are alternatives now, but the researching I did when I was looking to change led me to believe that they don't support as much as XMarks does. If you take into account that XMarks can sync bookmarks, history, open tabs, and passwords across several browsers across all the browser's supported OS's you can see why people would be a little upset.
Regardless, people despise change. How would you feel if your favorite pub closed? There are probably plenty of pubs that are just about the same nearby, but I know I would be sad.
Also in the business-model-change department that users of this site will care about, ZoneEdit is transitioning accounts to a new business model soon. People who enjoyed five free domains worth of DNS service will see their free service cut to two domains (potentially leaving some forgotten-about sites unreachable) unless they've paid for credits for their premium services at some point in the past. They're also multiplying stored credits by 12 because they're going monthly instead of annual credit usage.
None of the alternatives work across several browsers on multiple platforms. I have xmarks on chrome, firefox, safari on 2 windows pc and one mac, plus the iphone. All through xmarks.
There are no alternatives at the moment.
Well the integration is so smooth its really idiot proof and it just works great. Plus anywhere you go and no matter if your computer crashes you always have your bookmarks. Fantastic service hope it lives on.
http://www.thetechnologygeek.org
Ya know, you don't even have to click on any of the links in the summary, but rather just hover over the first link to learn that XMarks is a bookmark synchronizer.
More specifically, it's a centralized service plus a plugin for all major browsers so that you can have the same bookmarks in every browser on every machine you use. Further, it lets you create profiles for your bookmarks, so that you can have slightly different bookmarks on different machines based on what you use that machine for (ie. your "home" bookmarks don't show up on your "work" machine). And for those who don't trust the centralized bookmark repository, you can even set up your own XMarks server (albeit slightly limited in functionality) and not have to trust them.
In short: it's pretty damn cool.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein