Mac: Bookit

Owning both an Apple G5 desktop computer, and a Powerbook, I have to deal with the issue of browser bookmark synchronization. I tried .Mac synchronization with Safari, but found it to be less than fully reliable, especially when I made, from time-to-time, a sweeping reorganization of my bookmarks. And .Mac synchronization doesn’t help much when you’re using OmniWeb.

A friend recommended taking a look at Bookit, by Everyday Software. As you can see in the screenshot on the right, Bookit synchronizes all your browser bookmarks against a master bookmark (Safari, etc.). When you perform a synchronization, Bookit can create a master bookmarks file (Bookit format) that you can transfer to another computer, to use as the sync reference by Bookit on that machine.

The latest release of Bookit (in beta) takes this one step further by allowing you to specify .Mac as a virtual “browser”, thereby allowing you to sync “to it,” or use it as a master reference. With this setup, I use Safari as the master bookmark on my G5, and sync “to” my .Mac account. Then, on my Powerbook, I use .Mac as the “master” bookmark, and sync “to” the local Safari bookmarks.

All in all, this is just the simple bookmark management system I’ve been looking for.

And some other bookmark related tips:

• URLwell, is a fantastically useful menu bar utility that acts as a temporary drop-box for URLs. Visiting a page in Safari or NetNewsWire that you want to read later, but don't want to "bookmark"?-- just drag the URL to URLwell, and it'll be there waiting for you.
• Cocoalicious is a Mac GUI front end to the del.icio.us web-based tagged bookmarking system. Fantastic. (And the subject of a future post here.)

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