I use several computers and a couple different web browsers during any given day. I bookmark work related resources, articles to read, and any number of interesting sites on my Web browser. But when I use a different computer or change to a different web browser, the links I bookmarked on one aren’t available on another.

While social bookmarking sites like delicious are very usful, having to navigate to their site to access my commonly used bookmarks simply adds in a few extra unwanted steps.  Xmarks (was FoxMarks) is a very handy bookmark synchronization tool that resolves this issue.

Xmarks allows one to synchronize bookmarks between computers and browsers. The use of multiple profiles allows one to to separate your bookmarks into categories — like for work and home. One can to choose which profile to sync on each computer. This way, all those shopping sites don’t show up on the work computer. The other nice thing is that all the bookmarks are also backed up, which comes in handing when an old computer is sent to the recycling facility.

Browsers currently support supported by Xmarks include Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari (Mac OS). There is also an alpha release for Google Chrome. One can also add bookmarks and have them synced to your computers/browsers from any computer using  my.xmarks.com. Xmarks can also synchronize passwords.

Xmarks’ Smarter Search feature add some level of relevance to Google searches. When you perform a search after installing the applicaiotn, Xmarks will highlight the top Google search results for that query, based on how many Xmarks users have bookmarked a particular site.

As with any third-party application, one needs to be mindful of any potential privacy issues. Xmarks does encrypt bookmarks while they are being synced to their server. Individual users’ bookmarks are also kept private from other users.

-Eric Schnell