In late September, Xmarks, the popular browser add-on that syncs bookmarks, saved passwords, open tabs, and so on, took its some 4.5 million fans on a roller-coaster ride.

It announced the imminent shutdown of the service because of lack of funding just to retract that a few days later when CEO James Joaquin hinted that a knight-in-shining-armor rescue was likely.

Now that rescue has been confirmed. In a blog posted today, Xmarks announced that it has been acquired by LastPass, a cross-platform password management service. This also means that Xmarks is now in transition from a "free" to a "freemium" business model.

The new model, which is similar to that of LastPass, allows people to utilize most of Xmarks' existing functions for free. More-savvy users, however, can also opt for Xmarks Premium, which costs $12 per year and includes new enhanced features such as support for iPhone iOS and Android, priority support, and more.

Apart from that, according to the blog, together with this merger, users can now opt for both the Xmarks and LastPass Premium services bundled for a reduced subscription rate of $20 per year, $4 less than if you pay for each separately. This bundle, however, doesn't mean the two services will be merged into one. Rather, they will remain as separate browser add-on downloads with their respective management Web pages.

This is great news for those who need to keep their browsers in sync. Though there are many bookmark-syncing services, most allow for syncing within a single browser. Xmarks, on the other hand, supports the three most popular browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome. It's likely that it will also support Safari and Opera in the future.

In the days after its shutdown was announced, according to Xmarks, a significant number of users pledged financial support to keep the service alive. If you're one of those people and you want to make good on your promise, the upgrade is available here.

Originally posted at Webware

Suppose you just found out Brendan Benson is playing in your town (he's in L.A. tomorrow, FYI). You don't have to run scrambling to the nearest computer to buy tickets; just fire up the new Live Nation app. With it you can find concerts in your area and buy tickets on the spot.

If your first reaction is to leave a comment telling me how much you despise Live Nation (and, by proxy, Ticketmaster), go right ahead. In fact, I'll start: If I want to pay a lot of ridiculous fees on top of already overpriced tickets, I'll just book some air travel, thank you.

But, hey, it is what it is. If you love live music, you rarely have a choice but to use Live Nation/Ticketmaster--so you might as well get some convenience out of the deal. (Say, maybe this is what all those "convenience" charges are for!)

It's a good app, letting you browse by concert or venue (both based on your location). You can search for artists or choose to see all the shows for a particular day.

Tap the Favorite button and the app does something clever: displays a list of shows based on artists already in your library. That's a huge time-saver. Of course, you can manually add artists to your Favorite list as well.

Live Nation's coolest feature? Set Lists. Choose an artist and the app displays a list of shows--sometimes dating back years. Tap a show and you'll see the entire set list. And if a song is available from iTunes, you can play a snippet or buy it.

My main complaint is that you can't look up concerts that aren't local. For example, if I'm flying to California tonight and want tix for tomorrow's Brendan Benson show, I'm out of luck--until I touch down, that is.

I wasn't able to test an actual ticket purchase, but all the elements are there: you can choose a price and/or section (where applicable), view a seating chart, and even request wheelchair-accessible seating.

For that kind of convenience, I don't mind paying a little extra.

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas

The Chrome Web Store, Google's mechanism to bring online services and features to users of its browser products, appears likely to launch shortly.

The online service is designed to let Chrome and Chrome OS users find, install, and potentially buy Web applications, similar in concept to what Google has done with its Android Market and to what Apple has done with its App Store. Chrome 8, which is in its final stages of development, is the first gateway.

"Chrome 8 is the first version that supports the Chrome Web Store," a Google programmer said in a discussion about Chrome 8 documentation. One element of that support likely will be a Chrome Web Store icon on the new page that appears when Chrome users fire up a new tab; it wouldn't be a good user experience, if the icon were there but were wired to an inert or missing Web site.

In addition, the final Web store icons for Chrome and, yesterday, its open-source counterpart Chromium now have been added to the browser software project.

Google had hoped to launch the Chrome Web Store in October, but that didn't come to pass.

Here's how Google describes the Chrome Web Store on its Chrome Web Store developer pages: "The store's primary purpose is to help Google Chrome users find apps. It'll do this by supporting search, by providing browsable categories of apps, and by displaying lists of various kinds, both curated and autogenerated. User ratings and reviews will be used to rank apps."

There are three types of apps. First are "installable Web sites," which are regular Web sites augmented with some meta data; they can be run either as hosted apps located on a server or as packaged apps that are downloaded and installed.

Next are themes, which customize Chrome's appearance. Last are extensions, which customize what Chrome can do.

Google released Chrome 7 on October 19; its new six-week release cycle would put a Chrome 8 release date two days ago on a strict schedule.

Chrome is gaining in its share of browser usage overall. The software, while free, is not unimportant to Google's business. The company sees it as a vehicle to advance its agenda of making the Web faster and more powerful. The Chrome Web Store adds a new facet to that work, potentially making Google a gateway people use to find services on the Web.

One other feature you can expect in Chrome 8 include a built-in Adobe Systems' Flash Player, which on Windows now is tucked in a sandbox where problems and security vulnerabilities are more confined.

Via the unofficial Google Operating System blog

Originally posted at Deep Tech

Jetpack, the revamped foundation for add-ons that customize Firefox, could arrive in its first beta form Monday.

Myk Melez, a leader of the project, issued a release candidate yesterday for the software and hopes to release the beta Monday, he said in a mailing list announcement.

"To have the most successful possible release, it's imperative that we test the hell out of this release candidate to shake out any last remaining release blockers," he said, referring to bugs that are bad enough to hold up the software.

Jetpack, taking a page from the Google Chrome extensions playbook, is a mechanism to let developers write add-ons using Web programming technologies such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Apple followed suit with its own similar extensions mechanism in Safari 5, and Opera is doing the same with Opera 11, currently in beta testing. The approaches are similar enough that Opera Chief Technology Officer Hakon Wium Lie believes that the browser extension framework eventually could be standardized.

Extending browsers lets people significantly expand what the software can do without burdening the vast majority of users with undesired features. What Mozilla calls add-ons its rivals generally call extensions. They're separate from plug-ins such as Adobe Systems' Flash Player or Unity 3D's gaming engine, which integrate through a different interface.

Firefox has had add-ons for years, but using a more complicated technology called XUL. It's sophisticated to permit very elaborate modifications to the browser, but Mozilla believes Jetpack will make add-on programming easier and more accessible. It also hopes the add-ons will be less prone to a major problem with today's add-ons, incompatibilities that break them when new versions of the browser arrive.

The Jetpack 1.0 beta won't have all possible interfaces Mozilla hopes to open up to developers. However, Mozilla expects to keep those interfaces it does have stable in future versions, Melez said.

Originally posted at Deep Tech