The wonderful cross browser bookmark sync tool, Xmarks, is closing up shop on January 10th, 2011. According to the Xmarks blog, they just couldn’t find a business model to keep the lights on.
I’ve been using the service for years and it will be missed. There is nothing like installing a browser add-on, filling in your user info and having all your bookmarks and passwords available to you in less than 5 minutes.
Firefox v2.0 was released earlier this week, just after IE7's release date. IE7 left me unimpressed with its interface and general look and feel. Firefox latest release is a much more polished product. Instead of changing mush of its buttons and interface, the developers left a good thing alone but gave the old interface a face lift. The only interface change I have noticed is the addition of close buttons to each tab. I still find myself mousing over to the right to close tabs but I'm sure Ill get used to this change quickly. The single greatest improvement in v2 is the addition of inline spell checking in web forms. I love this feature and its implementation was done perfectly. Good job people. You can read about more features here .
So can these improvements further take a bite out of IE's market share? Not without an inovative marketing plan or, better yet, a large PC builder installing it on all its PCs. Dell & Google have a deal to install the Google Toolbar and Desktop on Dell PCs. Mozilla should explore this type of deal. Firefox's ~15% market share would quickly improve if our grandma's and mom's had the browser installed and ready to go on their new PC.
