Firefox Browser Sync

CIO Magazine has an article about a new tool from the folks at Google for the Firefox web browser (created by the Mozilla Foundation) that synchronizes all of your personal information contained within the browser across different computers.

For instance, say that you have a desktop computer at home, and a notebook (laptop) computer that you take with you when you travel. You run Firefox on both computers. For most people, the options/settings that would be on the desktop computer wouldn't be the same as the options/settings on the notebook, especially when you're talking about a web browsing application such as Firefox. With Google's new Firefox Extension, the version of Firefox on the desktop computer will have the same settings (bookmarks, history, cookies, etc.) as the version on the notebook computer.

While there have been other attempts at creating an extension that will synchronize a user's personal data within Firefox, those extensions relied on the fact that one would have access to a server to store the data. If you didn't have access to a server where you could store your personal data securely, then the extension was, basically, useless to you. What makes Google's extension very usable is that your data is stored on Google's servers under your Google account.

Pretty nifty, huh? This is pretty important to me because I use Firefox on about four different computers at the moment, and none of the computers have the same Firefox data as any of the others. With Google's new Firefox Extension, I'll hopefully be able to enjoy the same browsing experience no matter which computer I'm using. I'll post an update once I'm back on a computer with Firefox installed and have tried out the new extension.

If you're already running Firefox, you can install Google's Firefox Browser Sync extension.

I'm back online -- but it's dialup!

OK, so I'm back on-line. I've found a somewhat more stable living environment. This very kind person (we'll call him "D") has allowed me to crash in his living room for the outrageous fee of helping him learn more about computers. He's kind, caring, and we have a lot in common. He has a computer but, at the moment, because he's just moving into his apartment, he has only dial-up access. Actually, the dial-up access is something that my friend, Cody, provided for me, through his AOL account (Cody works for AOL Wireless).

So anyway, now that I'm online again, hopefully I'll be updating my blog a bit more frequently.

Just as I logged in to work tonight and went to my personalized Google home page, I came across this story, about how some companies (like GM) do get the "new media" (online media), and how other companies (like the New York Times) just plain don't get it.

I'm back -- at least, for the time being. More tech, political, and gay rights issues to come, as well as the on-going soap opera that some call my life....