Foxmarks: A bookmark synching tool

While playing around with Mozilla's FireFox, I came across Foxmarks, one of the recommended Firefox add-ons. The main advantage of the tool, apart from the fact that it is free, is that it allows the synchronization of Firefox stored book marks on different machines. I find option to be a pretty useful feature in the consultancy world, where we move from one system to another and sometimes have to do so at a pretty quick notice. While exporting bookmarks and importing them is an option, it requires a third party medium to transport the bookmarks from one system to another. Foxmarks allows you to perform this operation using an intermediate server. The server also acts as a backup device for the storage of the bookmarks.

Two major advantages of Foxmarks are that the installation process is very light and that the tool is easy to use. Foxmarks has one main button "Synchronize now" which pretty much does what it says. It synchronizes the bookmarks on the local machine with a master copy, that is stored on the Foxmarks server. The master copy on the server is created when the user synchronizes for the very first time.Of course , you need to create a user id to use the service. After the first synchronization, the user has the option to synch the local copy with the server or vice-versa.

While the tool is pretty handy and efficient, it has a few annoyances. Why, for example do I need to manually install the tool on every computer before synchronizing my bookmarks. I feel that Foxmarks should offer to self-install, if a user logs into the Foxmarks account from a non-Foxmarks installed browser. Further, the tool does not allow the synchronization of selective folders. This feature would be handy and would definitely speed up the syncing process.

In the world of online bookmarking (delicious), I find Foxmarks to be an interesting and useful application for someone who is constantly on the move.