Bookmark-syncing application Foxmarks has updated their site to support easy access to your bookmarks from your iPhone, iPod touch, or other mobile device. Last week we highlighted O-Marks, an native iPhone application that syncs bookmarks to your iPhone. O-Marks requires you to access those bookmarks outside your browser, though, which isn't ideal, and it seems like a bit of an overkill for something as simple as bookmarks. With the Foxmarks update, just point your mobile browser to my.foxmarks.com, and it'll serve up the mobile interface of your bookmarks complete with search. It's fast and easy to use, but I'd throw in a vote for opening links in new windows so you can switch back to it more easily. A direct bookmark sync with mobile Safari would be ideal, but the mobile version of Foxmarks is a close second. Don't have an iPhone? The Foxmarks update includes a similar small screen interface for your mobile device, too.

iPhone/iPod touch only: Instapaper Free, the iPhone app cousin of previously mentioned bookmarking tool Instapaper, lets you bookmark up to 10 web pages you want to read while you're offline. That may not sound like an amazing feat, unless you've tried to keep a page open in mobile Safari and have it not try to refresh and fail when you're not connected. The app uses a JavaScript bookmarklet—which, at this point, you have to manually tweak a bit—and the Instapaper web service to provide you with your reading. The one drawback (or possible benefit) is that pages are knocked down to a text-only, mobile-friendly view. Other than that, it's a good way to ensure you can do some web reading on a plane or wherever you lack service. Instapaper Free is a free download for iPhones and iPod touch models running the 2.0 upgrade; the "Pro" version uncaps the 10-article limit.

Read More »

iPhone/iPod touch only: Free application O-Marks automatically syncs bookmarks to your iPhone from Firefox-syncing tool Foxmarks or from your Delicious account. The most intriguing feature for Firefox users is the Foxmarks integration, since once you've set up O-Marks with Foxmarks, your Firefox bookmarks now automatically sync to your iPhone. That means you don't need to use Safari just to sync bookmarks to your iPhone anymore. It just takes a little know-how to get it set up.

Read More »

Our favourite bookmark-syncing extension for Firefox, Foxmarks, is venturing into syncing your passwords as well as your bookmarks between browsers over the internet. Coupled with Foxmarks' new profile support, you can selectively sync what passwords go where and keep your banking passwords at home and your IT passwords at work. You have to opt into the password sync beta to enable it in your Foxmarks account. Of course, trusting your important passwords to a feature in beta—no matter how secure it appears to be—should make anyone concerned about security and privacy antsy, so do proceed with caution, and maybe only use this feature for your low-security passwords. Do you sync your passwords to the cloud, or do you wish you could? Let us know in the comments.

Read More »

Dan Lewis, developer for the user-edited search engine Wikia, was researching a recall on a car seat, and pasted what he found on the search for "marathon recall." Later on, he had to look up more information on his car seat, and realised he'd created a kind of bookmarklet—one he could just tell his wife over the phone, or tell a friend at a party. The results will vary, of course, with how often your search term gets edited, but with Wikia still in its nascent popularity, you can share information on specific things without having to worry about emailing a link.

Read More »

Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): Firefox extension Fast Dial replaces blank, empty tabs with thumbnails of your favourite sites. Fast Dial may look a lot like Speed Dial (and it is), but it also has several cool features of its own that set it apart. For example, you can set custom keyboard shortcuts for any of your Fast Dial thumbnails, create Fast Dial folders that you drill into for more thumbnail bookmarks, drag and drop items to reorder them, and customise the look and feel of every aspect of the Fast Dial page.

Read More »

Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): Firefox extension WebChunks creates bookmarks to monitor any section of a web site. Based on Internet Explorer 8's WebSlices feature, the latest release of WebChunks allows you to subscribe to any area of a web page—whether the developer set it up for use with WebSlices or not. The gist, then, is that you can bookmark a dynamic section of a web page and quickly bring it up any time by clicking the WebChunks toolbar—similar to Dashboard's Web Clips tool. The newer version (0.3) of this runner-up extension in the best Firefox 3 extensions contest isn't available yet on Mozilla's servers, but the latest is available from the site below. If you like it, let's hear how you're using it in the comments.

Deepmemo is a social networking site based around a simple concept: identifying quotes and useful information and then placing them in your profile (the company catchphrase is "social quotation service"). Install the Deepmemo toolbar and then you can add any text you encounter online by highlighting it and pressing the Deepmemo button. Since the user base is predominantly Eastern European right now, you might have difficulty deriving much value from the quotes saved by others, but it's an interesting twist on the familiar social networking meme. I'd like to see a toolbar-free version to save on screen real estate too. Deepmemo is free, can be accessed with a Facebook, Google or OpenID account.

All platforms with Firefox: If you like Delicious' ability to filter bookmarks by multiple tags (like "programming" and "tutorial"), you'll love the TagSifter extension for Firefox. Now that Firefox 3 supports bookmark tagging—and you've got keywords assigned to all your favourite URLs—TagSifter can help you navigate, search, and drill down to exactly the link you're looking for. Like Delicious, TagSifter adds related tag suggestions, and offers advanced search operators that can find exactly the bookmark you're looking for. For example, the expression:

Read More »

Search site del.izzy combs through the actual word content of your bookmarks on (newly re-launched) social bookmarking service Del.icio.us. So if you vaguely remember, for example, bookmarking a guide to hacking your router, but the link has one of those annoyingly non-specific titles ("w00t x 25! Awesome hack!"), you can find it with a quick search here. The site notes that it occasionally gets throttled by the Del.icio.us overlords; in that case, head over to previously mentioned Google hack deliGoo and try your luck there.

Read More »