I'll be screwed if I ever have to retype the short URL. So no good for printing on packaging.
Why would you rely on any free third-party shortener for print to begin with?
9m.no – Short URLs for the Unicode Age
11–20 of 75 posts
Re: 9m.no – Short URLs for the Unicode Age
#12Short URL's have two purposes for me:
- They are easier to spell on the phone (This is not.) - I like to track the clicks (Which I can't do with this.)
But, as a proof of concept, this is nice.
OT: Oh, I'm turning into a real HNer with this comment.
Re: 9m.no – Short URLs for the Unicode Age
#13From the source code README " rel="nofollow">https://github.com/ehamberg/9m>:
9m Unicode URL Shortener. Generates a shortcut from http://9m.no using two unicode characters, e.g. http://9m.no/പ湛.
The server will choose two characters at random from the all the printable characters and then cross its finger and hope you use a great font.
(This is a horrible idea in many ways and was a quick hack for fun.)
Re: 9m.no – Short URLs for the Unicode Age
#14I got http://9m.no/𑂜൭ for my daughter's website, but I'm wondering whether this helps shrink character count when used for services like twitter. It's not at all readable, but since it's two (I think) 4-byte unicode characters, will that URL be counted as 13 characters or 21 characters?
Twitter "shrinks" URL's no matter what. My website link is is 11 characters[0], I don't know how shorter it can get.
[0] http://bt.hn
Re: 9m.no – Short URLs for the Unicode Age
#15I got http://9m.no/𑂜൭ for my daughter's website, but I'm wondering whether this helps shrink character count when used for services like twitter. It's not at all readable, but since it's two (I think) 4-byte unicode characters, will that URL be counted as 13 characters or 21 characters?
Twitter shortens every URL regardless and reserves 23 chars (I believe) for each link in a tweet.
Re: 9m.no – Short URLs for the Unicode Age
#16[deleted]
Re: 9m.no – Short URLs for the Unicode Age
#17I got http://9m.no/𑂜൭ for my daughter's website, but I'm wondering whether this helps shrink character count when used for services like twitter. It's not at all readable, but since it's two (I think) 4-byte unicode characters, will that URL be counted as 13 characters or 21 characters?
Pasting one of those characters in, we see it's counted as one character. However: Twitter replaces all URLs, even shortened ones, with 22-character t.co URLs. Using 9m.no on Twitter is pointless, especially since Twitter displays the original URL for t.co URLs only. Using another shortener, the shortened URL is all that is shown, which isn't very reader-friendly.
Re: 9m.no – Short URLs for the Unicode Age
#18Short URL's have two purposes for me: - They are easier to spell on the phone (This is not.) - I like to track the clicks (Which I can't do with this.) But, as a proof of concept, this is nice. OT: Oh, I'm turning into a real HNer with this comment.
Your comment is justified. When you think about why you use short URLs that is pretty much it. It used to good for twitter but now they shorten any URL themselves, you don't get any difference in remaining chars whether it's a 4 char domain or 40.
Re: 9m.no – Short URLs for the Unicode Age
#19All the usual HN nitpicking and obscure edge case discussion should probably be done in the light of ehamberg's own comment: "This is a horrible idea in many ways and was a quick hack for fun." [0]
Re: 9m.no – Short URLs for the Unicode Age
#20[deleted]
Upgrade. We only test IE9+ where I work now.