ReadWriteWeb

Mozilla just announced that Weave, the organization's experimental browser sync addon, has graduated from Mozilla Labs and is now part of the official Firefox roadmap. The name of the product has been changed to "Firefox Sync" and Mozilla expects it to become a default feature of Firefox in "an upcoming major release." Firefox Sync allows users to sync their bookmarks, preferences, browser history, passwords and tabs between different computers. Mozilla also added a few new features to Firefox Sync that will make it easier for new users to start using the addon.

Mozilla just announced that Weave, its official synchronization tool for Firefox, has just hit version 1.0 and is now generally available. Weave is a free browser add-on that can seamlessly sync bookmarks, saved passwords, browsing history and open browser tabs between different computers that run Firefox. Weave also runs on Mozilla's mobile browser for the Nokia N900.

Google announced bookmark sync to the Chrome browser in a blog post earlier today. Chrome users can sync their bookmarks across various machines and store them alongside Google Docs. While the feature is not a new concept amongst browsers, the significance is that yet another player is storing your data in the cloud with the ability to distribute it across networks. As predicted by ReadWriteWeb and Forrester's Jeremiah Owyang, it appears that your social data is converging with the browser with potentially huge implications for data portability.

Within the next two weeks, Google will release a new development version of Google Chrome that will include the ability to sync bookmarks between different computers. As Tim Steele, a software engineer on the Chrome team explained in a message to the Chrome developer group, the synchronization will be managed through a Google account. Changes in one install will be reflected in another Chrome instance in real time thanks to the Chrome team's use of the Google Talk servers as the messaging backend for this service.

The good folks over at Mozilla Labs posted a screencast this morning of an experimental new way to log in to websites while using the Firefox browser. The approach leverages the Mozilla Weave platform, an eighteen month old technology that ties together the local browser experience, with online data stored for users.

The new login method lets users log in to an OpenID supporting site or a traditional username/password site with one or zero clicks. It's a password manager, essentially, but it looks like an especially smooth one from one of the most trusted vendors online. And it syncs with the cloud so you could log in to your browser and then your favorite sites from any computer. It looks real nice.

Not too long ago, Google announced that it was going to stop the development of its Browser Sync project. Browser Sync automatically synchronized bookmarks between different computers. Mozilla just announced a new version of its own bookmarks synchronization product, Weave, which was first announced last December as a Mozilla Labs product. Its first version, while already interesting, wasn't quite up to par with Google's offering. With this latest version, Mozilla aims to fill the gaps left by the demise of Browser Sync - at least for Firefox 3 users.