Mozilla takes on del.icio.us with new web syncing Weave platform
By Matt Jansen
del.icio.us, Mozy, and other social and personal data storehouses should take note: Mozilla is entering the competitive landscape with some visionary ideas. The organization aims to keep the online user experience customized wherever, and however the web is accessed with its new Weave platform.
As the web continues to offer more solutions that fit the software-as-a-service model, users continue to search for methods of connecting with those solutions easily with all of their customizations intact.
To access any web service, the first thing you need is a URI. With Weave installed, Firefox would query a remote server to make sure your latest set of bookmarks is downloaded. Meet your latest competitor, del.icio.us.
According to Mozilla, Weave will “focus on finding ways to enhance the Firefox user experience, increase user control over personal information, and provide new opportunities for developers to build innovative online experiences.”
To make Weave more tangible, here are some use cases posted by Mozilla.
- Automatic backup and restore: all bookmarks, add-ons, and user data could be stored on a remote server and restored in case of a crash. This could be extended to accommodate more types of files, which would move Weave into the online backup space (keep the innovations coming, Mozy).
- Personalization made portable: browser settings synced up whether you’re on a different computer or on a cell phone with Firefox installed.
- Get up and go: your browser history is preserved across devices so referencing information you recently found is easy (forget to print those driving directions?).
- Collaborative bookmarking: create bookmark projects that can be organized with comments and calendars. Mozilla provides an example with two people exploring a vacation and they’re able to collaborate throughout the process with shared bookmarks.
With Mozilla potentially storing so much information about its users, keeping that information secure becomes critical.
Dan from Mozilla posted the following points on keeping user data safe:
- We currently encrypt on the client all data that gets placed on the server, with an encryption passphrase that only the user knows.
- We kept the server intentionally dumb and standards-based, so that anyone can set up a server for themselves and/or their friends or company.
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