I have no less than four sets of bookmarks: work PC, work laptop, home laptop and college PC. Complicating things even more I use two different browsers: Internet Explorer in work and Firefox at home.

I’ve spent the last 6 months e-mailing URLs and links all over the place to try and keep up. I gave up on the work laptop and college PC, but even keeping the other two straight was next to impossible. So what to do?

I needed to merge two different browser bookmark types from four computers without suffering massive duplication or loosing anything. Here’s what I figured out…

#1) Magus Branding created this Bookmark Converter which converts/synchronizes/merges all types of bookmark folders. It’s free and easy to use. In fact, I think it’s brilliant!

#2) Most major portals now offer a bookmark hosting facility. Since I have both Yahoo! and Google accounts these are the two I checked out. My main personal e-mail is on Yahoo! (legacy issue) so I ended up using theirs. Also, I preferred the structure offering both folder and tag based filing.

Apparently, Yahoo!’s new offering is a disimprovement on the service they used to offer but you can read up on this for yourself on many forums. Since I never used it before I can’t comment. Seems pretty good to me.

Both providers say you have to install and use their toolbar. While the toolbar will make usage easier, it turns out it’s not absolutely necessary. Using a three or four step process you can still add and check your hosted bookmarks. Personally, I just bit the bullet and installed the Yahoo! toolbar turning off all the other buttons and gadgets.

By the way, if it isn’t obvious at this point, you’ll need either a Yahoo! or Google account to do what I did.

Here are the links to their bookmarking pages:

Yahoo! Bookmarks

Rather than just give you Google’s link here’s a great blog on their system: Google Bookmarks FAQs.

#3) Export your and save your bookmark files all on to one computer desktop (e-mail them, memory stick, etc.). It doesn’t matter which computer you use because Bookmark Converter will merge all the files and make one single, unified file. The Help files in Bookmark Converter will set you straight on the particulars of the actual importing and merging. The bookmark file will be called <bookmarks.htm> or something very like that.

#4) When you have your merged bookmark file you will then upload it to Yahoo! or Google. This took me about 30 seconds for 2,500 bookmarks (a 2MB file) approx.

That was it. Finito!

There are a myriad of other ways to achieve bookmark synchronization. Here’s a couple of articles describing other methods if you feel so inclined. They’ve all got their merits

Hack Attack: Back up and sync your Firefox bookmarks with your personal server

10 Ways to Manage and Synchronize Bookmarks

Seriously, if anyone has a better way, I’d love to hear about it.