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http://to/ World's Shortest URL Shortener

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Re: http://to/ World's Shortest URL Shortener

#81

Post by Skeuomorph »

leonh wrote: post #59
_dan wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The former. Even though it's 355 characters, at least it tells me it's a Google maps link. Which the shortened version doesn't. There are some situations where URL shortening is arguably useful. But there's absolutely no reason why "microblogging" should be one of them.

You could use this bookmarklet which translates all short URL's in to long ones. But then again maybe you do not trust longurlplease.com. javascript:void(function(){if(typeof%20jQuery%20==%20'undefined'){var%20s=document.createElement('script');s.src='http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.2.6/jquery.min.js;document.getElementsByTagName(head)[0].appendChild(s);}var%20l=document.createElement(script);l.src=http…

That inline bookmarklet didn't work in Safari 4 (OSX 10.6), but the bookmarklet from http://www.longurlplease.com/ did--thank you for sharing it.

Re: http://to/ World's Shortest URL Shortener

#82

Post by bumblebird »

andrewljohnson wrote: post #75
_dan wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The former. Even though it's 355 characters, at least it tells me it's a Google maps link. Which the shortened version doesn't. There are some situations where URL shortening is arguably useful. But there's absolutely no reason why "microblogging" should be one of them.

Spoken like a person without a Twitter account.

eg most people.

Re: http://to/ World's Shortest URL Shortener

#83

Post by Skeuomorph »

russss wrote: post #42
rbanffy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to national TLDs and how a company can have this level of access... I don't want to know...

Countries can, and frequently do, sell the rights to their ccTLDs to third parties. For example, Verisign leases the rights to the .tv domain off the Tuvalu government for $50m/year.

Also LibyanSpider.com

Re: http://to/ World's Shortest URL Shortener

#84

Post by rapind »

catone wrote: post #45
furyg3 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. They're a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

I disagree with that statement. Even before the rise of microblogging, URL shorteners were helpful in certain situations. Which URL would you rather paste in an email for readability's sake: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Oak... or http://tr.im/Gw8B In context, the recipient should have no problem anticipating the URL's end point (i.e., you probably just wrote something like, "here are some directio…

URL Shortener makes sense in this context for sure. I think providing your own friendly paths in web apps you build is a good idea too, so people don't feel the necessity to use a url shortener which is one more thing to do.

The maps URLs are ridiculous. Google should provide their own shortener for these imo. Then you get the best of both worlds, smaller more readable URLs and within a domain you recognize / trust.

Re: http://to/ World's Shortest URL Shortener

#86

Post by symptic »

catone wrote: post #45
furyg3 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. They're a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

I disagree with that statement. Even before the rise of microblogging, URL shorteners were helpful in certain situations. Which URL would you rather paste in an email for readability's sake: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Oak... or http://tr.im/Gw8B In context, the recipient should have no problem anticipating the URL's end point (i.e., you probably just wrote something like, "here are some directio…

This tells me Google should consider providing shortened URLs. maps.google.com/a7sga would be great.

Re: http://to/ World's Shortest URL Shortener

#87

Post by bjelkeman-again »

andrewljohnson wrote: post #75
_dan wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The former. Even though it's 355 characters, at least it tells me it's a Google maps link. Which the shortened version doesn't. There are some situations where URL shortening is arguably useful. But there's absolutely no reason why "microblogging" should be one of them.

Spoken like a person without a Twitter account.

Twitter should solve this problem, they should stick links separately to the 140 characters. Like they don't force you to encode the picture of the person in the 140 characters.

For SMS, well if the link goes beyond 140, send it in a separate SMS? Should SMS messaging compatibility for Twitter break the whole paradigm of transparency of addressing on the web?

Time to move on and create solutions looking forward, not backward.

Re: http://to/ World's Shortest URL Shortener

#88

Post by roc »

bumblebird wrote: post #53
catone wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with that statement. Even before the rise of microblogging, URL shorteners were helpful in certain situations. Which URL would you rather paste in an email for readability's sake: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Oak... or http://tr.im/Gw8B In context, the recipient should have no problem anticipating the URL's end point (i.e., you probably just wrote something like, "here are some directio…

That problem should be solved in the 'reader'. If a url looks long, get your email client to show a small version of it. Get it to show the full URL when you hover over it. Whatever. Just do it in the client. Even on twitter it's a stupid artificial restriction. It would be pretty trivial to show minified links for SMS alerts (Which is a tiny amount of twitter anyway now), and show full URLs for everyone else. Then c…

Exactly.

And while they're at it, they could emphasize the actual root domain when showing links.

The fact that scammer links with obfuscated URLs are still successful is shameful.

Re: http://to/ World's Shortest URL Shortener

#89

Post by nollidge »

rudd wrote: post #51

Maybe it's something with my corporate routing/firewall/who knows, but I just get an error saying my browser can't find it (no matter the browser). For that reason I really hope this doesn't catch on.

I think my corporate proxy is blocking this as well, or perhaps our DNS servers or something. In any case, I assume there will be a large swath of people for whom this redirection will not work.
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