I don’t have a  lot of bookmarks on any of the computers I normally use.  I just don’t spend a lot of time surfing the net and when I do, I don’t bookmark pages.  I figure that if I can get to drdemento.com, facebook.com, weather.com, and Google, well, what else do I need?  I figure that if I found it through a Google search once, I’ll be able to find it by a Google search again if I really need it.  Four weeks ago I had less than 20 sites bookmarked on my computer at work, about 15 on my computer at home, and 4 on the laptop I’m typing this post on – and those 4 were the ones that came already bookmarked when I downloaded Firefox.

I never jumped on the Delicious bandwagon and the idea of tagging a bookmark is alien to me.  But I think I finally found a bookmark tool I like.

XMarks is a tool that you can download for Firefox or Chrome that allows you to synchronize your bookmarks from computer to computer.  By installing it on all 3 of the computers I just mentioned, I now have the same set of bookmarks synchronized on all 3 of those machines.  If I bookmark something at work, when I get home all I have to do is click on the XMarks button on the bottom of my Firefox browser and XMarks will make the bookmarks on this computer match the bookmarks on my other computers.

And XMarks also keeps my list of bookmarks stored online so that if I’m not using one of my normal computers, I can log in online and access my bookmarks from whichever computer I’m on.  I’m sure this will also come in handy the next time my computer at work crashes and has to be fixed too because XMarks will act as a backup for the bookmarks I synchronize.

XMarks also allows you to create profiles so that you can synchronize “personal” bookmarks only with computers for personal use and “work” bookmarks only with computers you use for work.  I would imagine that would be usefull for people like my brother who have lots of pornographic bookmarks that he wouldn’t his boss to see on his work computer (if he actually had a job, that is).

I’ve been using XMarks for about a month now and I’m actually finding it quite useful to have the same set of 23 bookmarks on all 3 of the computers I normally use.

XMarks also has tools for sharing bookmarks, tagging bookmarks, synchronizing open windows, and synchronizing web history across different computers.  It’s definitely a tool worth checking out.

GHW