Foxmarks
Encyclopedia
Xmarks, formerly Foxmarks, was a San Francisco-based company which produces an add-on to web browser
s, which is also entitled Xmarks. The company was founded in 2006 by Mitch Kapor
and was acquired by LastPass in December 2010.
, Google Chrome
and Apple Safari
(on OS X 10.5 and 10.6) that synchronizes bookmarks between computers, can also synchronize passwords, open tabs, and browsing history (Firefox only). Opera
support is highly anticipated, but has not been implemented at this time due to a lack of API functionality. It is one of the most popular Firefox add-ons, attaining over one hundred and fifty thousand downloads per week and almost fifteen million total downloads as of April, 2009.
On September 27, 2010 it was announced that, due to the company's current financial projections resulting from its purely voluntary-donations funding-basis, in January of 2011, Xmarks would be entirely discontinuing its service. On Sept. 30th, Xmarks CEO, James Joaquin, noted that he had been "pleasantly surprised by the volume of interest" that has been expressed since his initial "closing-announcement". This interest has been shown by both potential buyers of the company, and by those who have thus far pledged to subscribe to the service at the site's "pledge page". At their donations page, Xmarks attempted to acquire pledges from 100,000 of their users to pay $10-20 per year for a proposed "premium Xmarks service" which launched on 9th December 2010. To date, Xmarks investors have invested $9 million dollars into the Xmarks project, but with a return on this investment not yet clearly in sight, unless sufficient pledges are received by Oct. 15th, apparently these initial investment funds are reaching an end-point.
On December 2, 2010, the password management service LastPass
acquired Xmarks.
or FTP
server to store their bookmarks.
Bookmarks are analysed to provide public services such as "Site Suggestions" and "Smarter Search" (Xmarks enhancements to Google web search). The privacy policy states that the results of this analysis are published without providing any information about individual users.
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
s, which is also entitled Xmarks. The company was founded in 2006 by Mitch Kapor
Mitch Kapor
Mitchell David Kapor is the founder of Lotus Development Corporation and the designer of Lotus 1-2-3. He is also a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and was the first chair of the Mozilla Foundation...
and was acquired by LastPass in December 2010.
Overview
The Xmarks bookmark synchronizer is an extension for Mozilla Firefox, Internet ExplorerInternet Explorer
Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...
, Google Chrome
Google Chrome
Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine. It was first released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on September 2, 2008, and the public stable release was on December 11, 2008. The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or...
and Apple Safari
Safari (web browser)
Safari is a web browser developed by Apple Inc. and included with the Mac OS X and iOS operating systems. First released as a public beta on January 7, 2003 on the company's Mac OS X operating system, it became Apple's default browser beginning with Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther". Safari is also the...
(on OS X 10.5 and 10.6) that synchronizes bookmarks between computers, can also synchronize passwords, open tabs, and browsing history (Firefox only). Opera
Opera (web browser)
Opera is a web browser and Internet suite developed by Opera Software with over 200 million users worldwide. The browser handles common Internet-related tasks such as displaying web sites, sending and receiving e-mail messages, managing contacts, chatting on IRC, downloading files via BitTorrent,...
support is highly anticipated, but has not been implemented at this time due to a lack of API functionality. It is one of the most popular Firefox add-ons, attaining over one hundred and fifty thousand downloads per week and almost fifteen million total downloads as of April, 2009.
Company history
In March 2009, Foxmarks was relaunched under a new name and service called Xmarks. Since Xmarks is a superset of Foxmarks, Xmarks includes many new features like suggested tagging bookmarks.On September 27, 2010 it was announced that, due to the company's current financial projections resulting from its purely voluntary-donations funding-basis, in January of 2011, Xmarks would be entirely discontinuing its service. On Sept. 30th, Xmarks CEO, James Joaquin, noted that he had been "pleasantly surprised by the volume of interest" that has been expressed since his initial "closing-announcement". This interest has been shown by both potential buyers of the company, and by those who have thus far pledged to subscribe to the service at the site's "pledge page". At their donations page, Xmarks attempted to acquire pledges from 100,000 of their users to pay $10-20 per year for a proposed "premium Xmarks service" which launched on 9th December 2010. To date, Xmarks investors have invested $9 million dollars into the Xmarks project, but with a return on this investment not yet clearly in sight, unless sufficient pledges are received by Oct. 15th, apparently these initial investment funds are reaching an end-point.
On December 2, 2010, the password management service LastPass
LastPass
LastPass Password Manager is a freemium password management program developed by LastPass. It is available as a plugin for Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, and Safari...
acquired Xmarks.
Privacy
Xmarks provides an option to encrypt bookmarks while they are in transit between the browser and the Xmarks server. Individual users' bookmarks are kept private from other users. However, there are clearly issues of privacy and trust in sending your bookmarks to a third party. To address these issues Xmarks provides an option for the user to avoid the Xmarks server, by using their own WebDAVWebDAV
Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning is a set of methods based on the Hypertext Transfer Protocol that facilitates collaboration between users in editing and managing documents and files stored on World Wide Web servers...
or FTP
File Transfer Protocol
File Transfer Protocol is a standard network protocol used to transfer files from one host to another host over a TCP-based network, such as the Internet. FTP is built on a client-server architecture and utilizes separate control and data connections between the client and server...
server to store their bookmarks.
Bookmarks are analysed to provide public services such as "Site Suggestions" and "Smarter Search" (Xmarks enhancements to Google web search). The privacy policy states that the results of this analysis are published without providing any information about individual users.