A while back Omar turned me on to FavoriteSync as a great tool to keep your IE favorites in synch across multiple machines. Omar has since moved on to Groove but I still much prefer this light, simple tool to the heavy-handed beast that is Groove (Groove is designed to be much more than a synchronization tool, it’s a Share Point-like platform with a large feature set and a start up time to match).
Setup is fairly simple, download the installer and run. In order to store your favorites on the FavoriteSync server you will need to sign up for an account, but filling out the form and waiting for the confirmation e-mail is about as complex as it gets. Using the default configuration FavoriteSync stores your favorites on their web site but if you want to be more geeky (or more secretive) you can publish your favorites to your own ftp site. Other advanced options include the ability to ignore certain folders (e.g. to keep work-only stuff off your home computer… or more importantly, vice versa), publish an XSL style sheet (useful if you have your own ftp/web site and want web-based favorites) and the ability to create multiple backup copies of your favorites.
Once installed the synchronization is automatic. Anytime you start IE or you change your favorites FavoriteSync will merge an updated copy with the copy of your favorites stored on the server (either yours or theirs). Your other computers will automatically pick up the changes when you next use them. Changes are merged if you change your favorites on multiple machines and the options allow you to tweak the sync behavior if you desire.
With a work laptop, work desktop and a home desktop it’s great to have my IE favorites finally roam to all my computers. The software is simple and effective, I recommend it to Windows IE users with more than one PC.
Software: FavoriteSync
Web Site: http://favoritesync.com
Platform: Windows/IE (FireFox version in beta)
Cost: Free/Donate Ware
Ease of setup: 4 of 5
Ease of use: 5 of 5
One reply on “Share your web favorites with all your machines”
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