"Made slightly – but not completely – tounge-in-cheek by @ehamberg."
“tounge”, typo or some play-on-word I don't understand?
You _can_ input your own to have something like http://✩.ws/awesometastic
The final one is simple printable URLs which people can enter easily. That's also a valid use case I think, but mainly if you can create your own URL, i.e. shorturl.com/hackernews; a random collection of numbers and letters is hard to type in on a cell phone and easy to mistype.
Besides, most QR codes just point to a bit.ly URL anyway (It's a cheap way to track QR usage separately from direct traffic).
- 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.
Nice proof of concept though.
something as simple as 邗諾
becomes %E9%82%97%E8%AB%BE , 18 characters!
Still, as other mentioned it's a neat idea that if widespread would make all kinds of encoding mistakes pop up :)
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.)
He recently posted about that not making sense anymore due to Twitter's URL shortener, but I don't have the link handy offhand.
[0] http://bt.hn
Kind of disappointed I got a two character code. Has he used up all the one character ones yet? Time to start a new domain!
I would probably polish it a bit more if I knew it would get this much attention, but hey! – it works, and uses almost no resources on the cheapest Digital Ocean account.
I recently saw some discussion about acid-state on Reddit, and it seems that the Hackage developers have had some troubles with it: http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/26405r/storing_data...
[0] http://yl.io
The source is available[0], can't remember if it's any good though. :)
I would call it the one of the most confusing and idiotic interfaces I've used in a while. Or perhaps I'm stupid? That's how the website made me feel.
That's a very good point. Interestingly, I think this has caught me out in situations previously. My observation was typing non-English characters would be too challenging on the keyboard I use, and as such provided an example where that may be evident.
Having glossed over the other (more important) problem as whether to use a URL shortener was excluded from my assessment (but interpreted as acceptance). Contrary to that, I could decide to use this technique to shorten URLs on my own domain, where the issues I observed would still be valid.
However, I'll throw a counter argument to support using URL shorteners just for the fun of it. I may decide to use it when:
1. There is a service-level-agreement that the service is to be operational for a set period of time (usually tied to a paid-for service). 2. It is akin to me using a phone number redirection service (I pay a top up for the redirection), and as such, have printed this number on business cards. 3. It is akin to putting a Twitter, Facebook or Linked In URL - all services that are free, and as such, have risk associated. 4. It is akin to providing a URL with a domain maintained by a third party country - for example, Libya controlling the .ly domain[1] 5. It may allow me to change the target URL at any time, keeping the content up to date. 6. It may allow me to monitor click through analytics.
But, assuming you only wanted to use it only for online purposes, then you have the following considerations:
1. Users don't know the target of the URL and may reduce trust. I know I've not clicked on shortened URLs of things I am unsure of the target page. 2. What benefit does shortening actually provide? If it's visual real-estate, the link can still be long with a shortened label.
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/oct/08/bitly-liby...
all services that are free, and as such, have risk associated
I find myself using goo.gl a distressing amount of time on Twitter.
As an experiment some time ago I grabbed a random sampling of URLs from twitter's limited firehose - and found that on average they spread the user's trail across no fewer than 4 redirects before the final destination was reached. Some as many as 7 or 8.
I've stopped posting URLs to twitter, out of respect for my followers.