Jan Leow's Press Blog


Online Bookmarks Service for Synchronizing between PC and Browsers

Store your bookmarks online and you can also synchronize between browsers and several PC including your mobile devices like iPhone, Android phone and Symbian enabled phones. Also no need to worry about losing all your bookmarks whenever you reinstall your PC.

Xmarks.com – this is the best so far that I have found. Works with Firefox, Chrome, IE and Safari (for Macs only). For mobile platforms like iPhone, Android and Symbian it is a payable premium service I am afraid. The multiple platform browser synchronization makes it the most handy of all the bookmarking service. It can also synchronize your browsing history, open tabs and passwords too (using lastpass)! You can go online and login to your account to check and edit your bookmarks, and if your current bookmark list has errors or too many duplicates you can also revert back to a previous backup set. Now that is very handy! Heard that it is planning to make a version for Opera browser too. I’m waiting for that.

Delicious.com – this is a social bookmark service, which means it is open to public. Good for sharing with friends and family about the sites that you found. Works only with Firefox and IE. The latest Firefox 4 and 5 update broke it. But I finally found a fix for it using the Compatibility Reporter extension.

Google Toolbar – Google toolbar has a bookmark service, works only with Firefox and IE. Don’t know why they don’t come up with one for their very own Chrome browser. Although Chrome has its own version of bookmark synchronization but it only works between Chrome browsers.

Yahoo Toolbar Bookmark – This is the least user friendly though they were the first to come up with the online bookmarks. I adopted this when it first became available. Unfortunately the latest “improvements” has made it very un-user friendly and inconvenient.

Other browser bookmark synchronization:
Opera – has a build in bookmark and speed dial synchronization.
Chrome – also has a build in bookmark synchronization plus it can also synchronize your browser apps, autofill, extensions, passwords, preferences and themes.
Firefox – not to be outdone, the latest Firefox 4 and 5 also has a bookmark synchronization as well as your browsing history, passwords and open tabs across all your devices.
Internet Explorer using Live service – Microsoft IE browser don’t have the build in synchronization, instead they use their Live service to sync your Favorites. That means not only your IE Favorites but also your PC Favorites integrating them tightly to their Windows operating system. Hmm…

Too bad I didn’t see any bookmark and various synchronization with Apple’s Safari browser. They should come up with these. Well you can always use Xmarks.

Point to note:
If you are already using Xmarks to synchronize your bookmarks, don’t enable the browser build in synchronization for bookmarks as that would create duplicates. Use one or the other but not both.

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