Just announced, Google Browser Sync plug in for Firefox. It syncs your browser stuff across multiple computers: bookmarks, history and passwords. It also claims to remember the last tabs you had open on and offer to open them on any machine you use. Could this be the holy grail of bookmark sync tools that I've been looking for? I'll try it out and give a full report.

You mean the holy grail of bookmark synch that we are looking for! Sage uses RSS feeds in your bookmarks, so this could also be a good way to synch RSS feeds without using a web based reader. It synchs the history too, so it should know what you've read.

I just wonder how tricky things like simultaneous use of two synched browsers will work (like if you're at home and logged in on remote access to work).

I've been using Sage religiously on my home Windows machine up until a week ago. I've never been able to get it to work on my Mac: it would install, but it would never detect RSS feeds on a page. Very annoying.

For the last week or so, I've been using Google Reader since it keeps all state on the server (and by definition, you have to be connected to the net for reading RSS to work). The UI has grown on me, although I wasn't too impressed when it first came out. Now I can pick up where I left off in my RSS feeds regardless of which machine I'm using, which is a really nice thing. The other useful feature is being able to "star" an entry, like in Gmail, so you can re-read the star'd entries anytime later. I'm sure that most other online readers offer a similar feature set.

This, combined with server-side storage for bookmarks and cookies is great, no more manual synching.

<TinfoilHat>All you cookies are belong to Google.</TinfoilHat>

Well the first thing I discovered is that I need to really organize my bookmarks better. My bookmarks are a real mess now that they are all merged together. It will take some work the clean it all up, but it should be nice when I'm done. I'm also starting to think that I won't sink my work machine to my home machine. My work bookmarks contain a lot of local intrAnet links and stuff specific to work. At least I don't think I want that stuff merged in at the same 'level' as my other bookmarks.

To answer the question about how sage deals with simultaneous use - it doesn't. You must 'log on' in one browser and then the other says that you are disconnected. You must then log back on in the first browser to get any changes that happened.

Also, I had still been using the Sage RSS reader extension to Firefox and Google did not sync those bookmarks very well. Now my reader is empty.

Are your blog bookmarks still somewhere in your bookmarks tree? The firefox update I did before the current one nuked the settings for all my extensions (including my entire list of saved tab sets). I still had my bookmarks though, so I just re-pointed sage at the right bookmark subfolder and it was back in action.

I'm finding that tab sync seems to be disabled if you are using session manager. Probably assumes you want to do that yourself. But if I disable session manager, then it syncs tabs.

You don't have to close the browser. If you move from your 1st machine to a 2nd and open Firefox it will 'log you out' of the 1st machine. The new firefox will then give you the option to open your previous tabs. You can then open some new tabs and you can pull them over to the 1st by 'reconnecting' or logging in which will log you out (disconnect you) from your 2nd machine.
The 'connect' logic is a little bit goofy but it lets you control when to update your tabs.

When I installed the Google plugin, it recognized that I was running session saver and said that it might cause problems with the Google plugin. It asked if I wanted to disable session saver so I said yes.

I think I'm with John about syncing work and home machines though. I don't mind the bookmarks, but that tabs are a problem because I have different subjects up at home and work. I haven't figured out how I want to use those yet.

J- I found my sage bookmarks folder after I made that post yesterday. I actually had two sage folders because sage had lost them a while ago and I hadn't fixed it, I just re-added them. Is the Sage reader still the RSS reader people have are using on Firefox?

I had previously commented that browser sync was not keeping my hotmail tab open across machines. I speculated that this was on purpose in an attempt to promote Gmail. Recently this comment was 'accidentally'? deleted someone affiliated with the search giant. Well to make it up to me, for the last few days browser sync has been retaining my hotmail tab and killing my Gmail tab! I guess it will all work out in the end.

Dude, we are getting spammed to death, and our spam removal tool has an "off by 1 error" where if you specify "show me the last 4 comments" it only gives you the last 3. Except that it doesn't always fail like that! So when I was cleaning out the spam, I factored in the "off by 1" and hit delete which nuked your comment. At least I told you I accidentally deleted it and asked you to re-post it. No need to get all anti Silicon Valley, jeez.

Sure.
But you missed the current point. I just thought it was funny that it has gone from regularly dropping hotmail, to regularly dropping gmail. All of my other tabs survive the sync just fine. I wonder why that is.

I'm thinking of just turning off the ability to do hyperlinks, although I'm not sure it will stop the spamming morons. Maybe a common shared password that people type into the email address field? What do you guys think?

I don't think they'd really care if links were off, and I really like putting links into comments (especially with a breaking news story, like all the Apple news).

It's not like there are that many readers here that a password would be so hard. Comment moderation would hinder the speed of discussions, I think.

Yeah, I'm just thinking of re-enabling the email field and people can enter a commonly known password there. It means we'll lose random commenters, but oh well. I could do something as dumb as putting an image here listing the password, but it's not spambots that are commenting.

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