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Show HN: Zigg.be – A link shortener that creates short speakable links

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Show HN: Zigg.be – A link shortener that creates short speakable links

#1

Post by _chendo_ »

I created this a year or so ago but recently made updates and I thought people might like to know that it exists.

I made this to easily send links or text to someone else verbally, like over the phone or over voice chat (which is what I made it for). The goal is to be able to tell the link to someone else without being ambiguous or needing to spell it out, so I grabbed the words off a Grade 5 level dictionary. I understand that the domain itself doesn’t qualify but I’m trying to get a better domain.

Show HN: Zigg.be – A link shortener that creates short speakable links
zigg.be

Re: Show HN: Zigg.be – A link shortener that creates short speakable links

#2

Post by _chendo_ »

I created this a year or so ago but recently made updates and I thought people might like to know that it exists.

I made this to easily send links or text to someone else verbally, like over the phone or over voice chat (which is what I made it for). The goal is to be able to tell the link to someone else without being ambiguous or needing to spell it out, so I grabbed the words off a Grade 5 level dictionary. I understand that the domain itself doesn’t qualify but I’m trying to get a better domain.

I hope others find it useful!

Re: Show HN: Zigg.be – A link shortener that creates short speakable links

#6

Post by asiekierka »

Praveens wrote: post #4

Its a nice feature you got there. Have you thought about creating permanent links? Are you going to blog on how you made it?

I do not think permament links on this would be a good idea simply because of the far smaller number of combinations.

Re: Show HN: Zigg.be – A link shortener that creates short speakable links

#7

Post by _chendo_ »

cynwoody wrote: post #5

Worked fine when I just tried it. Question is, what happens to those snappy URLs when more than a few (thousand, million, billion) folks discover it?

Before the changes I made recently, the maximum expiry you could have was 12 hours, which some people thought was too short, hence I bumped it up to 7 days.

One way is to decrease the maximum expiry for guests and allow people to sign up to gain access to longer expiries, which keeps the words in use down.

Otherwise, I can add more adjectives to increase the number of possibilities. There's already an adjective layer when the single word is exhausted.

Re: Show HN: Zigg.be – A link shortener that creates short speakable links

#8

Post by _puk »

_chendo_ wrote: post #2

I created this a year or so ago but recently made updates and I thought people might like to know that it exists. I made this to easily send links or text to someone else verbally, like over the phone or over voice chat (which is what I made it for). The goal is to be able to tell the link to someone else without being ambiguous or needing to spell it out, so I grabbed the words off a Grade 5 level dictionary. I unde…

You have an API for this?

I imagine this could be of use to "the other link shorteners".

It's a great idea, and with reference to scaling, perhaps short well know quotes / sentences could work.

Re: Show HN: Zigg.be – A link shortener that creates short speakable links

#9

Post by _chendo_ »

asiekierka wrote: post #6
Praveens wrote: post #4

Its a nice feature you got there. Have you thought about creating permanent links? Are you going to blog on how you made it?

I do not think permament links on this would be a good idea simply because of the far smaller number of combinations.

Indeed, although namespacing permanent links would be doable, it wouldn't make much sense and other URL shorteners would do the job.

Re: Show HN: Zigg.be – A link shortener that creates short speakable links

#10

Post by _chendo_ »

_puk wrote: post #8
_chendo_ wrote: post #2

I created this a year or so ago but recently made updates and I thought people might like to know that it exists. I made this to easily send links or text to someone else verbally, like over the phone or over voice chat (which is what I made it for). The goal is to be able to tell the link to someone else without being ambiguous or needing to spell it out, so I grabbed the words off a Grade 5 level dictionary. I unde…

You have an API for this? I imagine this could be of use to "the other link shorteners". It's a great idea, and with reference to scaling, perhaps short well know quotes / sentences could work.

Not just yet, need to do more thinking about how I'd like it to work with regards to preventing abuse etc.

I'd like to keep the link size down because one of the use cases is for say a lecturer giving a link to class. Keeping it short lets the lecturer easily write it on the board, and also faster to type.

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