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Non-Libyan URL Shortener

gadaf.fi

71–79 of 79 posts

Re: Non-Libyan URL Shortener

#71
post #37
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define correctness in this context.

Any translation into english is going to be "wrong" in some aspect. If I were to define correctness, Gaddafi's name is spelt: قَذَّافِيّ‎ Anything else is just a translation and it all means the same, despite being different.

And while we are at it:

anything else is a _transliteration_

Re: Non-Libyan URL Shortener

#72
post #53
post #16

While it is a funny play on all those .ly domains and the fact that vb.ly got seized by the Libyan government, it is my opinion that yet another URL shortener is a stupid way of protest. Let me explain: I work with the Urlteam, a group of people that saves shorturl->longurl mappings for a bunch of shorteners. The typical life cycle of small shorteners is this: - URL shortener opens, gets some praise for weird feature…

That sounds like a useful thing to do. Does Urlteam have a website somewhere? A quick search didn't turn up much information.

The "website" is at http://urlte.am , but it only includes a placeholder (the content intended for it currently resides at https://github.com/soult/urlteam-stuff/tree/master/website ). We also have a page at the ArchiveTeam website ( http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=URLTeam ), but our main communication happens through IRC, #urlteam on efnet.

Re: Non-Libyan URL Shortener

#73
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true either, there aren't many 140-char URLs anyway.

Sure, but the relatively short link to your reply, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2492783 , is already 44 characters, so I'm only left with 96 characters on a twitter message. With bit.ly, the link is much shorter with 21 characters, http://bit.ly/j8IpC8 , and I'm left with 119 characters to describe the link in a twitter message. Oh, and I'll know how many people clicked on my bit.ly link. I've become addicted…

But that's a circular argument. If there's no enough room to say what you want to say in a Twitter post then write a blog entry or send an email.

Re: Non-Libyan URL Shortener

#74
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the relatively short link to your reply, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2492783 , is already 44 characters, so I'm only left with 96 characters on a twitter message. With bit.ly, the link is much shorter with 21 characters, http://bit.ly/j8IpC8 , and I'm left with 119 characters to describe the link in a twitter message. Oh, and I'll know how many people clicked on my bit.ly link. I've become addicted…

But that's a circular argument. If there's no enough room to say what you want to say in a Twitter post then write a blog entry or send an email.

The problem is "I need 20 more characters for my Tweet". This is only solved by URL shorterners, at the moment.

Re: Non-Libyan URL Shortener

#75
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the relatively short link to your reply, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2492783 , is already 44 characters, so I'm only left with 96 characters on a twitter message. With bit.ly, the link is much shorter with 21 characters, http://bit.ly/j8IpC8 , and I'm left with 119 characters to describe the link in a twitter message. Oh, and I'll know how many people clicked on my bit.ly link. I've become addicted…

But that's a circular argument. If there's no enough room to say what you want to say in a Twitter post then write a blog entry or send an email.

Yes it is pretty much an artificial problem created by an arbitrary limit.

It would be better if Twitter offered their own way to shorten URLs (or have a separate limit for URL length), so that you could still see where the link pointed before clicking on it.

Re: Non-Libyan URL Shortener

#76
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's a circular argument. If there's no enough room to say what you want to say in a Twitter post then write a blog entry or send an email.

Yes it is pretty much an artificial problem created by an arbitrary limit. It would be better if Twitter offered their own way to shorten URLs (or have a separate limit for URL length), so that you could still see where the link pointed before clicking on it.

If you use the Tweet button, either embedded in a page or installed as a bookmarklet, it will run through Twitter's own shortener. A long version of the URL will then be displayed in the Twitter UI.

Re: Non-Libyan URL Shortener

#77
I know this is kind of a joke, kind of a way to bring publicity to whats happening in Lybia, but if the bit.ly domain disappears you can always just rewrite "bit.ly" to "j.mp" and the short URLs will keep working.

Then again, this presumes that the company is still running (which we can't really put a ton of faith in), which is why i use http://isshort.com (shameless plug) to find publisher-provided short URLs where possible.

Re: Non-Libyan URL Shortener

#78
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's a circular argument. If there's no enough room to say what you want to say in a Twitter post then write a blog entry or send an email.

The problem is "I need 20 more characters for my Tweet". This is only solved by URL shorterners, at the moment.

Maybe we should try 'tweet compression'? Im sure you could pack a lot more text into 144 characters using the right compression algorithm.

Dammit i missed april fools day to announce my 'tweet compression' service :(

Re: Non-Libyan URL Shortener

#79
post #17

I think it should add http:// if it's missing.. I wasn't sure what wasn't working at first when trying www.google.com. Also, I find gadaf.fi really hard to remember.

Just pick up a newspaper any day for the next few months and the name is bound to be in there.
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