Ten Reasons Why

That's actually pretty funny... I saw your post in NetNewsWire, and thought "Hey, that would be cool... I should check that out" and saw that you had linked to my post on .Mac bookmarks. Wow. small world.

That would be very useful if it could be extended to support RSS subscriptions, server favorites, keychain entries (for passwords etc... security could be interesting though).

I expect none of the resources listed here are exactly what you are looking for, but maybe a start - a class of web-based applications called 'web-based bookmark managers' - cf. http://216.239.53.104/search?q=cache:V6VV5MS8mhkJ:useful.webwizards.net/wbbm.htm+site:useful.webwizards.net+web-based+bookmark&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

For the longest time I used Backflip from many different machines, and combined with it's handy bookmarklet it worked great. I could also expose any portion of these annotated bookmarks to the public for their use, and share bookmark categories with other contributors. I backed off depending on it, though, when it became insolvent and was taken over by some former employees. It is still alive though. cf http://www.backflip.com/members/nessman

Darcy -- Absolutely. Lots of information I'd like to keep synchronized between my various computers.

Scott -- Yep, I've been through that list of bookmark managers many times; haven't found one that's worthwhile. And lots of them were dot-bombs.

Really, I'm not interested in a web-based bookmark manager. The interfaces to those tools are nearly always crap; I like Mozilla's bookmark manager. I just want to save a bookmark file to a location on the web, then push a button to synchronize my local copies with that online source.

A company called SyncIt had a client-side app that did a pretty good job of synchronization, but they morphed into a pay service full of spyware. Ugh. That's why I keep hoping the Mozilla community will address this. The Bookie project addresses it, but you have to run a server-side Java application, which is problematic on my host. I think it's dynamic synching, not synch-on-demand. I'd be more than happy with synch-on-demand.

The Apple implementation just saves the bookmarks file on a WebDAV server run by Apple. It's not too long before someone has a similar feature for Mozilla - there's already a Calendar project that's interoperable with iCal.

You could do something of this sort if you had a WebDAV enabled server by saving your profile on it. Mozilla is very picky about the profile these days, though.

I think the key to making this usable by anyone is to not require anything on the server side (other than an HTTP server).

All I want is a static file accessible by HTTP that can be synchronized with a local version on demand or on a scheduled basis.

When I press the "sync bookmarks" button, my imaginary client side app does the following:

1. pulls down the remote "master" bookmarks file


2. merges it with the local version (which is what the browser always references)


3. prompts me to resolve any conflicts/redundancies


4. writes a new "merged" bookmarks file to a temp space


5. overwrites the local bookmarks file with the new merged bookmarks file


6. overwrites the remote "master" bookmarks file with the new merged bookmarks file

That's it! Easy as pie! Probably a lot easier with Mozilla than with IE, because of IE's crazier Favorites format.

Anybody on the planet can get web space accessible via HTTP for free or dirt cheap. If a developer builds this kind of mechanism to rely on WebDAV or the presence of a Java application server or whatever, then you're limiting it to the smaller subset of users who have access to those kind of server-side tools.

What's the flaw in my thinking here? Why hasn't anybody built this?

Well, WebDAV is built to do that. HTTP PUT is incredibly insecure and pretty much any decent ISP will have it disabled. Apache 2.0 (most places are still using 1.3 derivatives) will have DAV support built in, so one day it may be common.

For now, if you have space you can ftp to, you could try something like BookSync ( http://booksync.mozdev.org/ ). It won't work all that great if you have multiple computers modifying the bookmarks at the same time, but will do the basics.

About WebDAV and "you're limiting it to the smaller subset of users": This is a typical catch-22 problem, similar to what I've been observing in the IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) world for years. In order to get better WebDAV (or IMAP) tools, people need to insist that providers provide WebDAV (or IMAP) access and if they don't, switch to a better provider! Once there are a lot of people using these protocols, the tools will be built and then even more people will use these protocols, and then there will be even more tools, ad infinitum. One of the reasons that I've been collecting a list of IMAP providers here:

http://www.ii.com/internet/messaging/imap/isps/

is because I'm trying to help break us out of this catch-22 lock. On this page I'm also tracking providers who offer WebDAV and so far I have 4 listed: Dreamhost.com, Imeme.net, Mac.com, and Workspot.com. Please tell me about others!

Thanks,
Nancy

I've been a happy customer of SynchIt for a few years, it keeps all of my Favoirites syncronized between home, work, and laptop, transparently. Waiting for Mozilla support, though.

Greg,

I hope this isn't like SPAM if so just delete it.

Anyway, I have been offering a web based solution that takes your bookmarks and allows you to manage the information. I am hesitant to call it a bookmark service because you can do a lot more with it.

I don't want this to be an advertisement but I'd be interested in you giving it a whirl and tell me what you think.

You can do things like boolean searches on your content, assign aliases to a web reference ao you just have to type in some familiar key to navigate to the site. I have integrated the service into Mozilla via their sidebar search and keyword search so aliases are resolved first. There are a bunch of broser buttons to assist in navigation and content addition, you can store a lot of info about the web page in a abstract. This is handy if you want to archive a news story that inevidably will go away and you can retrieve it later.

Navigation isn't bad and you can cross-reference web references and folders arcoss hierarchial boundries.

All sorts of good stuff.

The only thing is I charge a yearly fee which is negotiable at this point.

If you try it out and offer feedback and suggestions you can use it for free.

here is a link to the site for more info:
http://www.wurldbook.com/info/

Thanks