Wow. This is good news. Not being depending on one single service is always a good choice.

Actually, syncing via other Cloud Folder services will be easy to implement and is coming very soon.  We planned it that way.  Instead of using the Dropbox API, BookMacster just simply puts the Bookmarkshelf into the "synced folder", e.g. Dropbox.  To push changes to The Cloud, BookMacster just saves the file and the Cloud Folder (e.g., Dropbox) app takes it from there.  To get updates from the cloud, BookMacster watches the Bookmarkshelf file for any changes written by others, and reads in such changes whenever they occur.  Add a few safety interlocks and – voila – you have an app which can work with any cloud syncing service.

The Simple Agents view will look like this in the next version



"Dropbox™" has been changed to "The Cloud", and the "Enable…" button is gone.

However, some Cloud Folder services work better than others with the "universal" implementation we have chosen.  Besides the $0 entry price point for a small Dropbox, Dropbox is also smart enough to transmit only the blocks of the file which have changed, which means it's a "bit sipper" on the network instead of a "bit hog" like Apple's iDisk component of MobileMe.

An extreme experiment shows the difference.  Take a .bkmslf file containing several thousand bookmarks, maybe 5 MB in size.  Put it in your Dropbox.  Now watch the clock and see how long the Dropbox "spinner" in the menubar spins for.  It takes about 2 minutes to upload to the cloud on our DSL line (300 Kbits/sec).  No problem because in real life you'll only do this once in a lifetime.  Now change one bookmark and save the Bookmarkshelf.  Dropbox activates again, but this time it only spins for a few seconds, because it only sends the changed blocks.  OK.  Now repeat the experiment with a MobileMe iDisk.  It takes about the same 2 minutes, both times.  Arghhh.  A few bits changed and they re-sent the whole stupid file.  If you have configured iDisk for Automatic syncing, it will do this every time you add a bookmark.

Some quick tests I did also indicated that Dropbox is probably faster about uploading in general; that would make sense – they can afford to be, due to their much greater efficiency they obtain from not sending whole files.

So, anyhow, BookMacster will soon be opened up to use other Cloud Folder services, although its user interface will not do all the hand-holding like it does with Dropbox setup.  We figure that users who are smart enough to find their own Cloud Folder service probably know how to use it.  Dropbox will remain the easy default for people who don't know anything about The Cloud and just want BookMacster to sync their bookmarks.

If anyone with a Jungle Disk or another service wants to do the experiment I described above and let us know the results here that would be cool.  Just copy and paste a big folder of bookmarks in your bookmarkshelf (creating duplicates, that's OK) until you get a few thousand, then Save As to your synced folder and start watching the menubar or whatever indication they have that an upload is in progress.  It would be nice to publish a chart comparing various services.