You probably know TinyURL, which takes nasty long URLs like this:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=edale,+derbyshire&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=44.25371,60.46875&ie=UTF8&ll=53.360285,-1.816006&spn=0.065462,0.118103&t=h&z=13&iwloc=addr
and gives you a nice shorthand version like this:
which does the same thing, and is much easier to put in emails, or read over the phone.
Well, a new service has just launched called Bit.ly (no doubt starting a new craze in Libyan domain names) which does much the same kind of thing, and a whole lot more. Bit.ly links look much the same:
but for more information about why it’s different, see this post. It looks good.
But TinyURL has been around for ever and has proved very reliable; it’ll be interesting to see if this new pretender can usurp it…
RSS feed
Apparently, TinyURL now allows users to add a custom alias to replace the code (“67laca” in your example above) that TinyURL generates, so they make more sense!
http://tinyurl.com/iPhone-3G-unboxed
Of course, if someone else has already used the alias, you’ll need to choose something else – and given that TinyURLs never expire, shorter aliases may disappear rather quickly…