Since these are almost incremental, it's easy to guess existing links. There must be both good and bad uses for this...
Google URL shortener available to the public
111–120 of 126 posts
Re: Google URL shortener available to the public
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why didn't you use a proper link in an HTML email?
Many people still prefer plain text email. I certainly do.
I prefer text email in theory. It's cleaner, simpler. Text for messages, that's how the web was meant to work, right?
I also cringe when I purple text in Comic Sans, as well as other unmentionables.
Yet, when I want to emphasize something, I hate using asterisks. It's not semantically correct, and it looks ugly. And how do you differentiate between underline and italics?
For this reason I support HTML email.
Re: Google URL shortener available to the public
#113Why do we need url shorteners again ? When I see a shortened URL the probabilities of me clicking the link go down to almost zero.
I'm with Jeff Atwood [1] on this one; we don't.
[1] http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/06/url-shorteners-dest...
Re: Google URL shortener available to the public
#114What hashing function they use?
Base62. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1119722/base-62-conversio... A case-insensitive variant is Base36: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_36 I remember you being a Lisp programmer; it's built into CL's Format function: (format t "~36r" 9999) ==> 7PR
Thank you!
Re: Google URL shortener available to the public
#115Why do we need url shorteners again ? When I see a shortened URL the probabilities of me clicking the link go down to almost zero.
1. Twitter. (Obviously)
2. Print magazine. (There was no possibly way to link to pages with long urls in print, now its bit.ly/fgyr )
3. Billboards (Eg. Find us on twittter, facebook, blah on witter with bit.ly/grwt )
Re: Google URL shortener available to the public
#116In all the excitement, we forgot to ask about the API. I am curious what they will provide, and with what limits.
One big problem I had with bit.ly on Twitter is there was no way to get all shortened URLs pointing to a "real" URL. This was a problem because I wanted to search for references to the "real" URL.
The lack of that feature of course empowered dedicated services like backtype (I suppose), who have special deals with Twitter so that they can get all references.
Re: Google URL shortener available to the public
#117Why do we need url shorteners again ? When I see a shortened URL the probabilities of me clicking the link go down to almost zero.
I had the same question. Until last week when I sent out a link to a google spreadsheet, and my awesome Navy Marine Corps Intranet Windows XP/Outlook 2007/Exchange system broke the link across two lines (but only after it was sent), and then every single recipient (about 100 physicians) said they couldn't see the document. I now use tinyurl.
Mindless copy & paste for the win!
Re: Google URL shortener available to the public
#118Ugh. Google entering this pretty much wipes out the space - companies like bit.ly are going to need to work on seriously differentiating themselves from the pack, and even then I don't think they're long for the world. I can honestly say I hope to never be in a market - or working on a product - where google suddenly decides to enter the game. Even if their offering sucks, or is broken, it sucks all the air out of th…
I don't think anyone really believed that something you can hack together in twenty minutes, where your business plan is completely based on "for as long as Twitter doesn't do one", really counts as a "space". Anyone who invested in it deserved to get burned. bit.ly were working on partnerships with publishers as their means of getting some monetization, but that's all I've really seen. I'd prefer the Google one to t…
where your business plan is completely based on "for as long as Twitter doesn't do one"
From what I could tell from the last emails sent from twitter, they are doing one. I wrote a very short blog-post on that since I was surprised nobody else seemed to notice:
http://jostein.kjonigsen.net/articles/166/Twitter_finally_ki...
Re: Google URL shortener available to the public
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many people still prefer plain text email. I certainly do.
I prefer text email in theory. It's cleaner, simpler. Text for messages, that's how the web was meant to work, right? I also cringe when I purple text in Comic Sans, as well as other unmentionables. Yet, when I want to emphasize something, I hate using asterisks. It's not semantically correct, and it looks ugly. And how do you differentiate between underline and italics? For this reason I support HTML email.
Using asterisk for italics and underlines (_) for underlines is an age-old convention that predates the web and HTML email by years.
I much prefer plaintext only mails. Not only are they readable on any device, I also don't have to be afraid of getting my machine infected by who-knows-what.