Despite using Revo Uninstaller’s strongest setting to uninstall this software, after using XP’s System Restore to roll back, and a subsequent reboot, I found Advanced URL Catalog splattered all over my Windows XP registry.

If you don’t know already know how to edit your registry, then ignore the following information. It’s easy to break your operating system if you don’t know what you’re doing.

If you know how to edit your registry, to remove this software manually, search for “adurl” and then “advanced url”, with keys, value and data ticked, and use your judgement on which folders to delete.

Don’t waste your time.

And if anyone knows of a good, clean organizer good for tagging and filing bookmarks, I’d love to hear about it… though I suspect this comments thread is dead at this point.

It set my IE home page to it’s product Home page (Jordysoft.net) without even informing me; which in today’s world it seen as a Spam/Adware/Malware or whatever malicious you want it to call…

Morever, the software is not much a big deal that we can’t do without it being there in the market…

I use Tiny Favorites instead. Hope fully, GOTD wll publish the Pro version of Tidy Favorites soon.

-Vipin

The brief description of Advanced URL Catalog was enticing, because Firefox has been my browser of choice since Version 1.0, and I use Internet Explorer only when I must, mainly to validate my Windows Vista license in order to download files from Microsoft’s Web site. I do bookmark Web pages on Microsoft’s site, especially the MSDN and TechNet sections, but I often forget to create those “favorites” as Firefox bookmarks.

Advanced URL Catalog seemed like a promising tool that would allow me to centralize my bookmarks/favorites.

After I provide this feedback, however, I will be uninstalling Advanced URL Catalog for two reasons.

First of all, for aesthetic and productivity reasons (caused by limited vertical space on the display of this notebook’s display), Advanced URL Catalog automatically triggers my “reject meter.”

JordySoft.com, for reasons that escape me, has chosen to imitate the horrible “ribbon” GUI of Office 2007 (a trial version of which came with my notebook and one of the first items that I deleted).

Advanced URL Catalog insults my sense of aesthetics with its ugly and, often, eye-straining, “skins”/themes. I set program’s properties not to use visual themes, but programs that use skins — and IOSoft is another offender that comes to mind with its black or white only hard-to-tolerate skins — do not make use of system visual-style/themes.

The vertical pixels wasted by the Advanced URL Catalog GUI are too precious for me, and I cannot afford an external display, for financial reasons, even though I have the hardware resources and RAM to support two external displays and would love to have at least one.

Second of all, JordySoft.com “hijacks” Internet Explorer’s home page (which, in my case, is a file on my hard drive that I hand-coded in XHTML and has links that I find useful). “Browser hijacking” is, and has always been, a standard, signature behavior of malicious software.

I have configured my system so that the JordySoft.com site, and links to JordySoft.com, are automatically blocked — “blacklisted” as potentially risky and definitely “crossing the proverbial line for me.”

I appreciate the vendors who monitor feedback about their products on the Givaway of the Day comments page — especially vendors who try to assist users with installation or usage problems (for example, programs that install with no errors, but fail to launch or cause problems for some users); of course, giving away a fully functional copy of a program AND responding to users’ comments on the Giveaway of the Day Web site are excellent marketing strategies.

VirusTotal’s results for Advanced URL Catalog are no cause for alarm. McAfee’s heuristic engine flagged the application, but McAfee statistically generates significant “false positives” — but NO security software offers full protection — and the best way to help keep system secure is to use good judgment and common sense — such as being cautious about the Web sites one visits and in managing e-mail (and attachments).

On the other hand — because I learned right from wrong — I do not pirate or “borrow/share” software licenses; by the same token, I do not wish to deal with software publishers who violate my trust — and JordySoft “blew it” by hijacking Internet Explorer’s home page. I am certainly not implying that Advanced URL Catalog is malicious software, but JordySoft did “crack” my system.

Finally, although Giveaway of the Day’s offerings are free and licensed software products, GAOTD users know that they are not entitled to product support or upgrades, but Advanced URL Catalog’s hyperlinks to its “tutorial” and “documentation” simply reload JordySoft’s Web page that summarizes the product and offers a link to a screen shot (of an empty application Window). Users who want “support” from JordySoft — especially if they paid for a product license — are instructed to access a forum on JordySoft.com, in which users of Advanced URL Catalog are expected to support each other.

This comment is my first, but Advanced URL Catalog and JordySoft.com “pushed my hot buttons,” although I continue to be grateful for GAOTD and vendors who choose to offer free versions of their software — and such “test drives” (although they do lack support) are an excellent marketing tool, but users do not hesitate to mention if a given program is unstable, minimally useful (or duplicates respected free and/or open-source programs), or if publishers make the mistakes that JordySoft has made with Advanced URL Catalog.

Cordially,

David

GOTD Staff – thanks for trying. They can’t all be winners.

Anyone looking for alternatives – I use a couple of link managers – both very good. Check out “Bookmark Buddy” and “Acqurl” as other options.

Web Wanderer

The program you mentioned isn’t really freeware – and nearly all of the useful features are missing from the crippled free version. See the feature list for yourself. http://gettransmute.com/download/