Blog of Death
Finally, smaller URL's!
September 17th, 2004
Stumbled upon www.tinyurl.com, a page that lets you enter a big-ass URL and returns a shortened version for you. The shortened URL it returns never expires (according to the site), so you can rely on it to work when your friends try it later.Why the need?
Huge URL's are becoming more and more of a problem as dynamic sites get more complex. Whether it's an inevitable factor of having a big-ass site or simply bad software design is questionable. Often, many URL's for e-commerce sites have empty or useless query variables (I rate them useless when removing them has no effect on the output of the page.) It could be laziness (easier just to copy the query parameter to all pages, whether it's empty or not), or ignorance (forgot to remove it when it's unused.)
But anyway, until sites find ways to shorten URL's, TinyURL provides a pretty useful service when you need to send a long link through email or instant messaging / etc. This is especially handy when sending / typing links for use on a cell phone. If you have your computer near by, hit up TinyURL and get a shorter version you can use on your cell phone.
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