Mozilla just released Weave Sync 0.4.0, but the reality is that it will take a long time before we need a 1.0 of Weave. Weave Sync coordinates your Firefox bookmarks, browser history, saved passwords, and tabs across your various Firefox installations: desktop, laptop, Netbook, and mobile.
The problem with this vision is that today it's largely unnecessary. For a variety of reasons (some very good, some not so good), Mozilla's mobile Firefox--codenamed "Fennec"--runs on Windows Mobile (version 6 and up) devices...and that's it.
While some new moves from Google may see Fennec port its way to the Android platform, this is a drop in the global browsing bucket, and doesn't even address the fact that there are other mobile browsers with much more momentum, as ReadWriteWeb notes.
Compounding this problem, it's unclear that most people want to sync between different computing devices. More and more people have gravitated to laptops or other mobile computing devices, using these as their primary computing device, rather than as an adjunct, under-powered alternative when away from the desktop.
Personally, I can even remember the last time that I thought about using a desktop computer.
Yes, I have four Macs sitting around the house, but each one is tied to a different family member. I don't really want my son's Webkinz bookmark on my Firefox browser any more than my wife wants to look past my NewsNow Arsenal news feed.
In short, Weave seems to be solving a difficult, but not important, problem. At least, not as currently envisaged.
I'd find Weave far more compelling if it acted as a Web service that let me take my full Firefox experience with me to devices that I don't own. For example, I occasionally find myself using the desktop computers in a hotel lobby, and would love a secure way to log in, claim that browsing experience as my own, and have all traces of myself obliterated for the next patron.
That would be a useful way to "Weave" together my different Firefox sessions: between computers I own and don't own, rather than just between computers I own.
How about it, Mozilla?
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Apple is the master of hype. Normally, it lives up to that hype. But in its 3G iPhone launch and now with its MobileMe synchronization service, Apple has fallen down. Flat.
Billed as an upgrade to Apple's .Mac service (to which I have subscribed for years), MobileMe is anything but. In fact, as The Register reports, it's not even the push email service that it purports to be. It's IMAP, just as .Mac was.
Email is managed through IMAP, and strictly speaking is pulled by polling the IMAP servers every minute, though that gives a reasonable impression of being pushed....
[C]hanges made using the desktop application are not instantly or automatically reflected on the iPhone or within The Cloud. Such changes need to wait for a synchronisation process, a lag of up to 15 minutes, before they are propagated between the platforms. Not only that but anyone trying to use some of the more advanced IMAP capabilities, such as the APPEND command, will find the MobileMe service unaware that any changes have been made to their e-mail account, at least until a good-old SMTP delivery triggers notification.
Is it really that big of a deal? Perhaps not. But it's also false advertising on Apple's part, and an unworthy "upgrade" on a service that for years has only had one major benefit: The name ".mac." I don't want a lame ".me" email address, and I'm finding that I don't really benefit from the changes to the .Mac service.
Are you getting more mileage from MobileMe?
UPDATE: I just received this from Apple:
... Read more
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