Yes, I know the title of this post is misspelled and should read 'Synchronized' instead, but being the creative person I am (...) I just had to include this subtle reference to Jamiroquai's 1999 album by the same name. This post is not about music, however. In my previous post I mentioned that Parallels Desktop for Mac allows me to run alternative operating systems like suse 10.1 and Windows XP in parallel with Mac OSX, without having to reboot. Furthermore, Parallels Tools enable folder and file sharing between Mac OSX and Windows XP. Something Parallels doesn't support is the sharing of bookmarks, cookies, saved passwords and browse history among browsers in different virtual machines. For a true Transparent OS to materialize, however, such synchronization would be required. Enter Google Browser Sync.
This extension for the Firefox browser allows you to synchronize your browser settings – including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords – across your computers (or virtual machines, for that matter). It also allows you to restore open tabs and windows across different machines and browser sessions. Instead of having to export and import bookmarks from one computer to another yourself and maintaining synchronization manually, this extension does all this for you, automatically. But the real benefits come from sharing cookies and passwords and having a single browse history across computers or virtual machines. It is easy to continue a session that you started on another computer, while looking up the URL of that site you visited yesterday while working from your desktop is now possible as well.
Although Google will most likely have developed this extension with sharing across physical computers in mind, its use across multiple virtual machines is illustrative of the kind of synchronization mechanisms needed to turn the Transparent OS into a reality.
This extension for the Firefox browser allows you to synchronize your browser settings – including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords – across your computers (or virtual machines, for that matter). It also allows you to restore open tabs and windows across different machines and browser sessions. Instead of having to export and import bookmarks from one computer to another yourself and maintaining synchronization manually, this extension does all this for you, automatically. But the real benefits come from sharing cookies and passwords and having a single browse history across computers or virtual machines. It is easy to continue a session that you started on another computer, while looking up the URL of that site you visited yesterday while working from your desktop is now possible as well.
Although Google will most likely have developed this extension with sharing across physical computers in mind, its use across multiple virtual machines is illustrative of the kind of synchronization mechanisms needed to turn the Transparent OS into a reality.
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