Urlybird: Online Computing Easier

LARRY BLASKO, Associated Press Writer
AP Online
07-19-1999
Urlybird: Online Computing Easier

When they pass out awards for making online computing life easier, Bradley Davidson should be near the head of the line.

Davidson, 31, is the author of something called ``urlybird,'' a shareware product for Windows 95/98/NT that neatly addresses one of the annoyances of modern life, URLs that want you to go somewhere and do something. This means you must stop what you're doing and, at the least, either go to the sites and quickly bookmark them, or copy the URLs to a file in another application.

So, OK, this isn't exactly a life-or-death issue. But when you get scores of e-mailed URLs a day, as I do, it's an irritation like tight shoes on a long walk. You wind up sore and cranky.

When urlybird is running, it sits in the system tray and watches the Windows clipboard. When you highlight an URL and hit control-C, up pops a dialog box with the highlighted URL. You can add a comment, if you wish, and with a mouse click, that URL link is saved to a list.

This means you can get on with whatever it was you were doing. And later, when you wish, you can visit however many sites you've highlighted, since clicking on any URL saved by urlybird will launch your default net browser.

If you want it to, urlybird will also drop that link from the list as soon as you visit it. Or, you can save the links as text, HTML, or browser bookmarks.

I've found it especially handy when doing research on the web, since it allows building a collection of links that address your topic and then read them serially while writing a report or proposal.

The software also has the ability to check an ``ignore'' list on certain URLs. You could instruct it to ignore http://www.payupdeadbeat.com, for example.

You can also enter a URL manually.

One of the nicer features of urlybird is its tolerance for sloppy highlighting. I highlighted the whole sentence with the made-up URL above, pressed Control-C, and urlybird was smart enough to throw out everything except the required information. I tried it again, this time with this entire story, and it still worked.

The nicest thing about urlybird is the price of registration: $9.95, making it a great bargain.

Davidson offers urlybird through a Web site, http://www.somewareonthe.net, where he has other products. You can download a trial version for free.

Davidson's Web site is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but the software -- and the brain behind it -- is first-rate. If you insist on snail-mail, the address is SomeWare, P.O. Box 2555, Rockford, IL 61132.

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