This week‘s App of the Week blog post features an App from the ownCloud Community. Bookmarks creates the possibility to manage browser bookmarks within ownCloud and therefore increases your daily productivity.
Using the Bookmarks App is simple and straight forward. If you want to keep a link to a website, you can save it in your ownCloud. There is a simple button which you can put in your bookmarks toolbar – when you click on it, a pop up opens, where you can even fill in a small description or assign some tags to the bookmark.
You can then later open the bookmark from your app menu inside the ownCloud web interface; that‘s useful if you switch browsers or devices. Even if you are at a public computer, e.g. in the library, you can access your private bookmarks.
We also talked to the app maintainer, Tim Wahrendorff:
Why did you pick up maintaining the app, and how much effort did you put into it?
I am using ownCloud privately for some years now, initially to manage my contacts and calendar for my Android phone without having to deal with Google Cloud. Over time I used more apps, like the Bookmarks app, but it stopped working after I updated to the latest version.
So, since I am a web developer I looked into the issue and fixed the app for me, and also documented on GitHub how to fix it for your own setup.
Someone from the ownCloud community stepped forward and asked me to upload the patched app to the new Marketplace, so I put in some effort to get it working under all circumstances, about an afternoon, and uploaded the app.
What is your favorite use case for the app?
I personally use the bookmark app as a “save and forget” dump for links I might want to take a deeper look later. Most of the time I find interesting links while in office and save them for later read when I am home.
I am not comfortable with “Cloud Storage”, like Firefox has for bookmarks, so I use my ownCloud for this.
I also like to switch browsers often for digital self-defense, it‘s nice to have all my bookmarks in my ownCloud, where they are private. Do you actually think browser switching protects one‘s privacy?
I personally do not switch browsers. I use Firefox a lot, because of the impressive extension ecosystem. I think it is more important to understand how privacy works and what kind of behavior endangers your privacy and act appropriately.
For understanding: I have my office laptop, my private work laptop, and a media PC in my living room. I want to have access to my bookmarks everywhere, but do not want to use a Cloud Storage that is not under my control.
You also run your own small social network, where we are having this interview right now. You wrote it completely by yourself – do we have to go this far to protect our privacy?
Not necessarily. Writing my own social network is more of a hobby than an activist statement. I think it is more important to use active blocker extensions, like NoScript or Adblocker to protect your online privacy. Or, if you are really afraid, the Tor-Browser bundle.
Alright, thanks for your time, and thanks for maintaining Bookmarks!
Oh, and I might add: Use ownCloud for your own stuff. In terms of privacy, do not trust Google or whoever with your contacts, calendar, or bookmarks.
Thanks to the amazing work of our community the ownCloud ecosystem is constantly growing with new features and functionalities being added to fullfil various types of needs and use cases. The open source code and APIs of ownCloud support this extensibility and encourage developers to become involved in the project.
Stay tuned for more news on the ownCloud Apps and if you feel like coding yourself become active at https://github.com/owncloud/!
