sounds great!

…

I would recommend not saying “let’s see what happens” when you’re giving a speech. I know that’s what what you want to do–to show us what happens–and I know that’s what we’re going to do next. So it’s kind of like sticking a needle in my brain, it doesn’t feel right.

Rather than that, I find it would sound better if you would say “here’s what happens”, or “this is what happens when…”. It’s much more natural sounding, and it doesn’t pick at my brain as much. It’s still unusual for someone to say such things, but at least it sounds more natural when you say them. Not that “let’s see what happens” isn’t natural, but it sounds like your talking to a bunch of children, which I think it shouldn’t anyway–even if you were talking to a bunch of children. In this case, instead of inciting interest you should be satisfying the interest that you have created.

Otherwise, it was a fairly nice presentation (though, the audience didn’t really participate… I’m not sure you gave them enough time to think, even if you didn’t want a verbal response, when you started on twitter). If I were one in the audience, and I had never heard about Foxmarks, I might be 50/50 about trying Xmarks out. If I had heard about, and used, Foxmarks, I would be more 65 to 70% likely not to try out Xmarks based solely on the information in this presentation–though I’m sure if you handed out some information sheets after the presentation that would increase my chances of going try it out by 10 to 20%(you did do that, right?).

Anyway, that’s just my 25 cents. ;)

Meant to say presentation instead of speech, and “more” shouldn’t be in the third paragraph (before “65 to 70%”). I’m sure you got the idea, though.

I downloaded. Everything working OK. However there was a tracking cookie removed as soon as I upgraded. I use AVG. Why the tracking cookie?

NOBU, talk about the product, not the presenter.

This looks like an exciting and helpful product. Will definitely give a try because of the info presented here in the video. I am already an avid fan of Foxmarks.

LARRY, I said nothing bad about the product, and as far as I can tell the presenter, whose _presentation_ I was talking about, was on topic.

As for the product: I am indifferent, for the most part. I think it’s a pretty good product, but since there’s no other product that I can use to compare it to, I can’t be considered objectionable even if I weren’t indifferent. What I can say is that it doesn’t have too many problems. It works pretty well, and the company behind it is pretty good too (though they can be stubborn, sometimes).

If you would, please try the product BEFORE reviewing it. As it is, you are rating it based on the presentation, which (as far as I am concerned) is worse than what I did. No hard feelings, just my opinion.

BTW– sync for google chrome would be awesome!!

If you can develop something which syncs all bookmarks across all the browser we have…that would be a success right from the word go..and people all over the world would have enough reason to “bless you” everyday….

I think the most important thing to people at the moment is cross browser sync on all platforms. I have a laptop, pc, iphone, machines at uni etc etc. Some are running linux, some mac and some windows. It is getting to the point now where I don’t want to be stuck with firefox on everything. I want to login to my windows machine use chrome, head over to a mac boot up safari and use firefox on my linux machine. Browser competition is becoming fierce again with each browser boasting more efficiency, better load speed etc etc. I want to be using the fastest one at the time but bookmark sync is just holding me back and keeping me stuck with firefox. There is no decent cross browser sync and certainly no cross platform sync available at the moment. Grab that corner of the market now before google or delicious or someone does it!

@Dennis: We use cookies to remember your Xmarks settings when you use the Xmarks client.

For instance: when you first use the Smarter Search feature that highlights results on the Google page, Xmarks shows a little “What’s this?” help text in the hover box to help you get started using this feature. You can check a little box to hide that section when you’ve read it and no longer need it. We use a cookie to remember that you no longer want to see “What’s this?”.

We also use cookies on our site to help us track how its performing and make sure that people are able to find content they need. For instance, we use Google Analytics which installs a cookie to do its job.

Finally, we also use cookies on our website to keep track of settings like whether you have Safe Mode turned on or off.

You can also check out our privacy policy which has a section devoted to cookies as well as many other details: http://www.xmarks.com/about/privacy

As for AVG: I’m not sure what AVG means by a tracking cookie. If possible, please send us the name of the cookie AVG reported and/or a screenshot. I installed AVG, turned on the “report cookie tracking” feature, and tried to reproduce what you saw but was unable to do so.

Thanks for your vigilance and for reporting the issue. We’d love to find out exactly what’s going on so that we don’t alarm folks in the future.

Please post your report on our support forums (the header still says Foxmarks but we’ll be changing that soon).

Will this work on IE 8?

Hi!

I’m using Firefox 3.6 alpha 1 and I’d really like to install Xmarks on my browser. Unfortunately, I’m unable to do it due to the incompatibility error. Are there any chances to update Xmarks so that I could use it?

@SolidSlash: Personally, I’d wait at least until there is a beta release before trying Foxmarks with Firefox 3.6. Otherwise, if you have to use it, you can turn off compatibility check (extensions.checkCompatibility in about:config) and then install Foxmarks.

I would be sure to backup your bookmarks if you decide to do this, since there’s no telling whether it will work correctly or not. I wouldn’t think there would be any problems, though. I think I remember reading somewhere that they don’t make any major changes to extension APIs on minor(?) releases, so it technically “should” work. It’s still good practice to keep backups. ;)

@SolidSlash, @Nobu:

To expand on Nobu’s comments, we don’t typically start testing against new versions of Firefox until they hit a beta milestone, which means that we also typically don’t declare ourselves compatible until there is a stable beta to test against.

You’re welcome to disable compatibility testing (as Nobu describes above) and let us know what you find. But you should know that by running alpha software you really are living on the bleeding edge. That’s part of the fun of using such early versions.

Unless it adds the ability to automatically keep all my Firefox bookmarks constantly sorted alphabetically, I will also pass on this one. That is the only thing I see lacking in Foxmarks.

I suggest open the suggested site in a new tab by middle-click

Any plans on making an ADD ON for google chrome now that you’re X marks and not FOX marks ? :)

Bonjour à tous,

Je ne suis pas bilingue et je déplore le fait que tous les messages, me parviennent en anglais.
Ce que je comprends en ce moment, c’est que foxmarks, va passer à Xmarks…. Bon ok ! Mais ce que je lis un peu partout, ne m’attire pas du tout. Les textes de : Michael Wilk le 26.03.2009 ;”Watch the step! ” et de : luigi-d le 25.03.2009 ; ” Useful, but severe privacy risks ” et de : admsupport le 24.03.2009 ; ” New Xmarks ” et encore de : First name Last name le 18.03.2009 ; ” Bloated ” tout cela à cette adresse ” https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/reviews/display/2410 ” Me font comprendre que la sécurité, les fonctionnalités, les barres d’outils ESPIONS tels que : Alexa ou le Bonzi Buddy …et j’en passe, que tout simplement ça ne devrait pas être offert comme un Add-on. Je combat chaque sur la toile, des conneries de ce genres et je ne m’attends pas à être obligé d’utiliser ce nouvel Add-on ( Xmarks ), pour me compliquer encore plus la vie ! Un, soit que je n’ai rien compris où de deux, virez cette nouvelle passoire public.
S’il vous plaît, faites l’effort de me répondre en français !

Merci.

your software is very cool, I just instaled it to MAC: fox, safari / PC: fox, IE7 , but I also need it for SAFARI on PC for windows xp, is it posible? are you planing that?

thx

seems like there are serious privacy issues here. I loved foxmark, never thought about the infringement of privacy, but now I see what the company wants to do. I guess its time to uninstall this again. Too bad…..

Hello James and everyone

I just stumbled across this upgrade issue today. First off, many thanks for a great service throughout the days of Foxmarks. It made my life very much easier. Every computer I support has it installed.

I do understand that you need to find a way to monetise your work, cover your costs and make profits. No problem. However I (like some others here) am concerned about who has my private data and what it is used for.

Can I please request that you give us a full, clear, simple rundown of what data Xmarks collects, what it’s used for and who has access to it? I hope that would dispel some of the fears expressed here. Some of us may then stop using the service, but we’d all be making an informed decision, which is right and proper.

Many thanks again
Roger

@felxus, Roger: I realize that you may have already, but I think it’s important that you read the privacy policy(here: http://wiki.foxmarks.com/wiki/Foxmarks:_Privacy_Policy ) before using any product.

From what I’ve read (and I’ve posted a similar response before, with more detail, but it may be outdated by now) it doesn’t appear that there should be a big privacy problem. You may also want to look at the following link, as it has responses directly from a company representative:
http://getsatisfaction.com/foxmarks/topics/can_i_prevent_xmarks_from_sharing_my_bookmarks?utm_medium=widget&utm_source=widget_foxmarks

And the change log[0] and “history”[1] for the privacy policy, if you’re interested:
[0] http://wiki.foxmarks.com/w/index.php?title=Foxmarks:_Privacy_Policy&action=history
[1] http://wiki.foxmarks.com/wiki/Privacy_Policy_Changes

And of course, it would still be nice to have a reply from someone to directly answer Roger’s question.

By: Roger on March 28, 2009 at 12:01 am

By: Nobu on March 28, 2009 at 9:16 am

That’s odd… o.0

Might be a timezone glitch Nobu, I’m in Afghanistan…

I suppose what we could/should be lobbying Xmarks for is a ‘privacy mode’ in prefs, whereby bookmark info is withheld from their aggregation system. Most people probably wouldn’t bother unticking the box, so there would still be a very usable system, but those with particular concerns could rest easy.

I’m fairly confident this will have been considered and rejected at some stage in the Xmarks design process, so we’d need a loud voice if they are to reconsider. It’s in the interests of Xmarks to have their community behind them…

Any support for this?

Well, this is not what I signed up for. I just wanted a way to sync my bookmarks. I have no interest in beeing part of xmarks statistics, aggregated or not and I am not interested in having other peoples bookmarks suggested to me. This is what I use digg, technorati and a lot of other sites for.

To bad on a previously great product. Uninstalling add-on and deleting all user-data on my account.

Shame you have decided to go this route. I agree with Magnus. I really just wanted a nice bookmark synchroniser. And you were perfect at that. I had to disable all the crap you installed by default into google search.

Plus your new logo sucks. The old one was simple, honest and friendly. The new one is just weird, ugly and means nothing.

Right, sorry Xmarks, I at least expected some sort of response. This is THE active debate on your new product and your users deserve to have their concerns addressed.

I am going to use SyncPlaces instead. It syncs bookmarks to the users’ own server. No unusual privacy concerns, no flashy extra services. Closer to what Foxmarks used to be.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8426

Good luck to Xmarks. You guys deserve to make some money from your work. But it’ll be without me…

Thanks for all your comments and feedback, both positive and negative. While we don’t respond immediately to every comment on our blog, we are listening. Regarding your open questions:

Chrome: Yes we’re working on it. Google has not released an API for developing Chrome add-ons yet but they are hinting that it’s coming soon. When it does, we’ll hustle to deliver a version of Xmarks that syncs seamlessly across Chrome browsers.

Internet Explorer: Yes we officially support versions 7 and 8. Users have reported good success using our product on IE v6 as well. In the next two weeks, we’ll roll out “Xmarks for IE”. Until then, you can use our legacy Foxmarks for IE and it will sync seamlessly with your other browsers / computers: http://download.foxmarks.com/download/ie.

Privacy Questions: A few of you have expressed your concern with our use of aggregate bookmark data to power our new discovery service. Per your request I’m including (below) an excerpt from our privacy policy that provides a clear and simple rundown of the data Xmarks collects and how it’s used. We absolutely want you to make an informed decision and we hope that you’ll continue to trust us with your bookmarks. Our founders have an impressive history of advocating for consumer privacy and we plan to continue that positive trend with Xmarks.

If you decide you are uncomfortable with our use of aggregate data, you have several options. As other readers have noted, we allow you to use our Xmarks sync add-on with your own server. There is a similar solution from a browser add-on called “SyncPlaces”. In either case your bookmark data will not be accessible to the Xmarks servers. Earlier in this thread we also posted clear instructions on how to delete your Xmarks account and remove all your existing data from our servers.

For those of you that have posted positive reviews of our product, thank you! It means a lot to me and the team, and we promise to continue to work hard to make Xmarks better and provide synchronization across more browsers and platforms.

Regards,

James
CEO, Xmarks Inc.

—— Excerpt from the Xmarks Privacy Policy ——

Types of Information Collected

In connection with your use of our site, we ask for and may collect a variety of information from and about you in different ways. For example, when you register to use our site, we ask for and store a username and email address. In addition, when you use Xmarks to synchronize your bookmarks with our server, we collect information such as the date and time of synchronization, your IP address, which version of our software you are using, and other information related to the transaction. As an intermediary in the synchronization process, we collect and store your bookmarks. We may also collect the information you disclose in any of our chat rooms, blogs, wiki pages, discussion groups, bulletin boards, and email you send to us.

Use of Cookies

Use of our site may require that you accept the use of cookies, which are small data files that our Web site sends to your browser for storage on your computer’s hard drive. We use cookies to protect confidential data, track activity at our site and better serve your needs and interests.

Use of Information

We use your personally identifying information to register you as a user of the site and to control access to your bookmarks. We may use your email address to contact you directly to alert of you of technical problems with your account, or, unless you opt out, to contact you regarding Xmarks services or products. (To opt out at any time, please log into your account.) We will never sell your email address to 3rd parties. We may also associate your personally identifying information with information we collect about your preferences and activities on the site, such as the particular pages you view at the site or other transactions you effect through the site in order to vary the content you receive in future visits to the site.

Our discovery engine analyzes in aggregate the bookmarks of all users in order to deliver services of interest to other users. This aggregation and analysis process removes all personally-identifiable information from bookmarks. For example, if one thousand distinct users bookmarked nytimes.com and cnn.com in a folder called “news”, we would mark both of those sites as popular, similar, and related to the topic news. In doing so we would never provide any personally identifiable information linking those sites back to any of the thousand users that bookmarked them. We also exclude sites with a very small number of bookmarks from our algorithms; this means we don’t display any information on a site until a sufficient number of people have bookmarked it.

Xmarks also displays site reviews, written by users, as part of our site information feature. These user-generated reviews do clearly identify the username of the author and provide a link to see a history of other reviews and site description edits made by that user. Contributing user-generated content on Xmarks is purely optional and is not a requirement to use our service. If you ever encounter content in an Xmarks review that you believe is offensive or in violation of a copyright, simply click the “Report This” link next to the review and we’ll investigate.

By using the Xmarks browser add-on you give Xmarks permission to use bookmark information anonymously and in aggregate to power our discovery service. If after trying our product you do not want your bookmarks added to the collective wisdom of our bookmark corpus, you can easily uninstall the Xmarks browser add-on and delete your account by visiting Xmarks.com, logging in, and clicking My Account.

—— Full version here: http://www.xmarks.com/about/privacy

lobbying Xmarks for is a ‘privacy mode’

not me, like most who drink the cool aid, they’ve lost the ground that was setting them apart. from other gimicky trickery, fluffed in buffed up words, that air a desire to please an promise the users, though its more for you and others in the make a buck, no matter if it kills off the duck, which was in this case more of the goose whos laid the golden egg, that set foxmarks aside of the rest, if thats what you want, I’m sure you’ll pick up more users, but lost users to other options out there and keeping whats left who’s to tired for hunting what they found in foxmarks, or almost like myself, was to tied up in matters closer and more dire than keep up on who the newest were to join the others who hve little touch with the process of emergence and the lead ups that take place to bring about the paradigm shifts.

By: Nobu on March 14, 2009
at 7:48 am

what is encouraging to read, is his motivtion still in attempting to help close this rift that forms in situations as this.

Fails to understand, foxmarks couldve stay’d, and if this is the cure all xmarks, would’ve funded foxmarks with ez.

was a calculated risk essesment plan to do this in the name of profit, if serious about stopping the venture tht wsa started to head down this way, I wouldve had a click to proceed on the setup, and/or web page load on the browser given this information here, saying you needed more help

least thats one scenerio that plays out, if the true intent was to keep progressing where foxmarks originated from, unless my lore is really flawed on the history

I’m tired, an little bit cranky, then swung by here expecting good news, i end up reading up on something I expect from washington up on capitol hill, listening to failed industries, fly in on first class, to say we’ll do better, but we need more cash.

Ahhh, just a irritating rash, seeing what was doing well, have to give away the momentum that was building towards what I hope is the emergence of the next paradym shift, not more change to keep a bartering system where the goals to short change all for benefits of a few.

there wouldnt seem to be such a vaccuum between the uppers and the majority whos the corner stone, and foundation for those standing above.

Nobu, did a decent break down, others were virtual modern day prophets, I was late, would’ve tried to express voices of concern like they have, instead of showing you meaningless rants, over a deal already made and done.

still hard to not shake the strategy used alot when outside capitol, rather move in hijacking/shanghing the crew and passengers, that were aboard, change the course, over setting sail on their own vessel

for what? monatarian game?? oh no no i mean its for more pushed force feeding of attempting to improve what was a functional tool.

all these additions could hve been added in per say xmarks right? which would hve been a suplement download for ppl clueless on networking information? or just so darn tired of X(*6) other social networking systems out there?

more variety is needed? if it was, why are there so many attempts to clump these weeds into one?

or is it just lazy marketing over used system to take whats already in use, to change it into what is ‘believed’ to be a ‘better’ way to ‘change’ things, an lets ‘hope’ and see what happens…

I do not have a clue, only know I was late to the show like usual to join.

Wish you luck James an to anyone else behind your new baby, if i was way off from the mark, was my bad for lack of checking of facts, would’ve spent more research if I suspected reversal was possible.

btw did you know blackwatter spent about a year working over a new name for their buisness, to change it to Xe, was a years worth of work to them, i know it baffled my mind. they had more motivation on why a name change was in need, to clear a murky lingering mark against them. When you pronounce it, doesnt flow off the tounge like axe does.

I’m last person to ask for buisness trends, or current cliques, but do have a bit of knowledge on NNUTS (nothing new under the sun)

unless argghh pirates are back into popularity, felt the days of eXtreme xplaying xboxs when driving leXus while a divX of Xfiles was playing were in the last book, or at last a closing chapter.

also blue X more of >< ribbon untied? failed to grasp the main statement behind the symbol, to show a seperation between what users want, and your flashing they want to them? seperation of your word jumble machine to keep? ah I’m going to have to use a life line, would poll the thread here, but only seen one mention about the new logo changes, and it had me clueless other than X marks the spot, but wasnt it usually in black scriptic or red?

just shaken off the last few drops, maken sure this rants out of my system

thanks for keeping the thread open, J
late
JC

JC

I’m not interested in your enhanced whatever.

I don’t want you messing with my google searches.

I just want the bookmark sync function, which seems to work well.

I’m disappointed that you’re making me take time to fool with a transition to xmarks. I wish you’d left well enough alone. Sigh.

Nice poem(?) JC WOLF. I had a little trouble understanding some of it, but it was interesting to read.

@Tom:

You’re not interested in enhanced sync? I believe that falls under the category of “whatever”.

You can turn off the feature which “[messes] with [your] google searches”, as well as the one which gives you information about the site when you click on the icon in the location entry box thingy, and almost all the other features are toggle-able, too.

You can have your bookmark sync function, or you could create a scheduled event(in Windows) or cron job(in Linux, maybe OS X) which can copy your bookmarks to a server somewhere or from a server somewhere. If you want to be fancy, you can create your own program (or even a DOS batch file, if you’re so inclined) which is intelligent enough to know when a change has occurred and to only perform the upload/download then. It’s not /really/ difficult, if you know what you’re doing or are willing to do research. Otherwise, there are other programs.

I think what’s really getting under people’s skins here is the bait-and-switch appearance which may be perceived by anyone who doesn’t/didn’t know the project’s original goals. It was definitely a surprise to me when I first learned of Foxmarks’ “new” service, Xmarks(.com). I wasn’t necessarily displeased by it, but it wasn’t really something I was interested in. When next I heard that some new features were added (namely, “Smarter Search” and “Site Info”/”Similar Sites”), I decided I would try them out. I wasn’t really surprised by what I saw; they looked very much like services I have used in the past (No, not delicious or anything else bookmark/google related). I was just as uninterested in these features as I was of those services, so I don’t use them.

That doesn’t mean I’ll completely abandon Xmarks–it’s still in my imaginary options list–but I am checking out other options, like the one mentioned in a previous comment. It seems to work alright, but it doesn’t seem quite as finished as Xmarks/Foxmarks yet, so I’m not sure I’ll keep using it yet. There may yet be other options, so I’ll look a bit more before making my final decision. It’ll be more a decision based on the balance between bloat/features and light-weighted-ness, with a slight disfavor to bloat. But I’m very forgiving, and if I find that the other options come short on stability I’ll come back–at least until they have time to stabilize.