Comments on: Long URL Please Makes a Lot of Sense

By: spammb

spammb — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:59:08 +0000

The webapp kindurl (http://kindurl.com) was created for the same purpose. It takes longURLs and makes prettified URLs. Very similar to tinyurl but gives context about where the url redirects.

By: Marc

Marc — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 20:48:04 +0000

“With all it’s security flaws, I just don’t understand why anybody still uses it.”

Last week Microsoft released a patch within 2 days. Firefox took 3 months to patch a similar vulnerability earlier this year. And yes it was being actively exploited.

I use FireFox, but with caution.

Yes Firefox has NoScript which helps no end, but most people who have no interest in technology don’t want to be dealing with having to turn on JavaScript all the time. IE8 is shaping up to be quite a nice browser, and I would switch if it wasn’t for Ad-block+.

If I were Microsoft I would release IE8 with an Ad-Blocker, one that blocks Google’s ads. That would probably be illegal in some way (even though AdBlock+ isn’t) but it would be an interesting way of competing ;)

Oh, and tiny URL lets you prefix it with the preview sub-domain which is nice. This can be set to the default behaviour via a cookie.

Marc
“I used to be a Mac fanboy. But I saw the light.”

By: Ed Oswald

Ed Oswald — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 18:13:22 +0000

Darragh – no problem. Hat tip to you on a good idea (surprised nobody has done this yet!)

Jeff – yeah, but about 70% of internet users still haven’t seen the light :)

By: Jeff

Jeff — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 19:43:39 +0000

Good point about not knowing where tiny url’s go, but really I couldn’t care less about IE users. With all it’s security flaws, I just don’t understand why anybody still uses it.

By: Darragh Curran

Darragh Curran — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 18:40:57 +0000

Thanks Ed for the write up (and ajaxian for creating an audience).

You’ve highlighted the security issues with short urls – for me the biggest win is I can more quickly decide if a link in a tweet is something that I’m prepared to click. And if I click it and am disappointed, at least it wasn’t on the basis of potluck!

Cheers,
Darragh