Today I read the news about Google Sync FireFox Extension, funny, because I’ve been doing something similar. I’ve tried it and I’m not enjoying it that much, first because the cookie sync had broken several things, second because it is slow, CPU intensive, and intrusive – you can’t do anything while it is doing an update, which happens when you open or close FireFox.
I foresee that one of the big problems will be the fact that they do not support multiple instances open, based on their own FAQ. Another thing that will be noted by many is that the extension doesn’t take into account the language settings, so my “Barra dos Favoritos” in Portuguese doesn’t get sync’ed with the “Personal Toolbar Folder” in English FireFox versions.
Besides those problems, I really do not think I trust them enough to keep track of my personal history and cookies, they can be encrypted, right, but Google has the total control of the extension and they can send the PIN at any time to they can decode everything.
When I first read the news and then the description of Google Sync I tough – wow, cool, now I won’t need to do that work! – wrong, this gave me even more satisfaction keeping the work I’ve been doing.
I’ve created a small server, in C# and using MySql as back-end, that allows me to store, in a central location, Bookmarks, Mails, Contacts, Calendars and Documents. The objective will be to create both a GTK# and an ASP.Net front-ends, as well as FireFox, and Evolution plugins. It is an objective, and the reason for this project to start, to enable the sync between my multiple computers and servers, allowing me to have my data everywhere, when I need – this means real time, because I use several connected computers to do my jobs.
In the end I’ll release this as an opensource project, but probably this will become the foundation of some eportal addins, which is maturing fast and I hope to post some news soon when we start our first public beta this month.
I would really use this for syncing settings on my work-laptop and my
But I would guess there is many projects like this out there; it is a thing many people would like – so they make their own small programs to scratch the itch.
machine at home.
Would be
nice with a project which gets a bit of momentum and does its job perfectly rather than being usable for everything.