Shorter is Sweeter: A Look at URL Shorteners

by Scott Nesbitt – February 7, 2010

Once upon a time, URLs (Uniform Resource Locators, which most of us know as “Web addresses” or “links”) were short and simple. Often, they looked something like http://www.geeks.com. If you had a personal Web page, your URL might look something like http://www.facebook.com/ComputerGeeks

Times change, and URLs have expanded. A lot. Just do a search at the Web site of a large corporation or your favorite online retailer. What often comes back is a long and convoluted URL. And that becomes a problem if you're into microblogging. Services like Twitter limit you to 140 characters. Some long URLs exceed that limit by quite a bit.

So, how can you tame those impossibly long URLs? With a Web-based service called a URL shortener.

How they work

As the name implies, a URL shortener shrinks a link – sometimes as much as 90%. With a couple of URL shorteners I've used, 160 character URLs were whittled down to 14 characters.

Obviously, you need to go to the site of a URL shortening service and paste a link in a field. The service checks its database to confirm whether or not that link already exists. If it does, the service gives you the short version that it assigned to the URL.

If the URL is not in the database, the service first adds it to the database. Then, the service runs the URL through a piece of software or a function called either a random alphanumeric generator or a sequential alphanumeric generator.  Those are just fancy names for a process that creates a short string of numbers and characters that the service associates with the URL – for example, http://bit.ly/7xCFKq. As you can see from the example in the last sentence, the URL of the shortening service appears in the smaller link.

Note: If your inner geek wants to know about this process in more depth, check out this article.

Clicking on a shortened link triggers a short series of events. The shortened URL points to the site of the service that originally shrunk the URL. Using the name assigned to the shortened URL, the service checks its database for the corresponding longer URL. Then, using some back-end Internet trickery called redirection, sends your browser on its way to the site in question. This all happens very quickly, and you don't really notice much (if any) of a delay.

Uses and problems

The most obvious usage is with microblogging sites like Twitter. As I mentioned at the beginning of this TechTip, some long URLs exceed the length of a tweet. A good URL shortener not only lets you add a link to a tweet, but also leaves plenty of room for a comment.

Shortened URLs are just more convenient for sharing in emails, blog posts, messages on social media sites like Facebook, or even when sending a text message from your phone. In fact, shortened URLs can appear anywhere – I saw one in an ad on the Toronto subway!

If you're sharing links with someone who uses screen reading software, a shortened URL makes is easier for the reader to process. And, obviously, it's easier for the person to type into their browser.

Of course, there can be problems with shortened URLs. Links on the Web are known to change or disappear. A shortened URL will always point to the original location. And not every URL shortening service allows its users to change URLs.

On top of that, it's not unknown for a shortened URL service to die. When a service dies, the shortened URLs created with it become useless.

Both spammers and malware writers have been known to use shortened URLs to drive traffic to less-than-savory sites. There are ways to avoid the potential problems of following such poisoned URLs. More about this in a few paragraphs.

What's out there?

There are literally hundreds of URL shortening services out there. URL shorteners come and go, but the ones discussed below are quite stable. If you want a list of all of the URL shorteners available on the Web, go here.

First up, one of the more popular and venerable services: TinyURL. This service has few frills. You enter the URL that you want to shrink into a text box at the site, and click the Make TinyURL! button. TinyURL spits back just that. You can even create your own custom URL – instead of http://www.tinyurl.com/3rE2t you can name the shortened URL http://www.tinyurl.com/mySite.

A service that's stolen a lot of TinyURL's thunder is bit.ly. That's partially because the output from bit.ly is shorter than that of TinyURL and because bit.ly also offers some interesting and useful tools. You can shorten URLs just by visiting the site. But if you get access to some useful tools if you sign up for a free account. What kinds of tools? A full list of the URLs that you've shortened. You can check how many people clicked a link in a given day. On top of that, bit.ly is now the default URL shortener for Twitter.

tr.im is a lot like bit.ly. You get the basics just by visiting the site: shrink a URL and optionally create a custom link (just like TinyURL). You can also automatically post the link to Twitter. If you sign up for a free account, you get a list of all the URLs that you've trimmed and how many times a trimmed URL has been clicked.

If you like your software a little more open and bare bones, then you might want to give ur1.ca a peek. Made by the folks behind the identi.ca microblogging service, ur1.ca only lets you shorten URLs. Not editing or deleting, or anything else. But if you're a developer you can download the source code and add the shortener to your own Web site or Web application. And you can download the entire ur1.ca database as a tab-separated file. Careful, though, it's a big database – a 25 MB archive, and growing.

Browser tools

Of course going to a Web site specifically to shorten URLs can be a bit of a pain. If you use Firefox, Google Chrome, or Opera then you can shrink URLs at the click of a button without having to visit a URL shortening site. This is done with an extension (also called an add-on or widget, depending on the browser).

Firefox has almost 30 URL shortening add-ons. The best of the lot is Shorten URL. It works with dozens of URL shortening services. All you need to do is select the URL in the browser address bar, right click it, and choose Shorten This Page URL. You can also shrink the URLs to images and to links on a Web page.

how do i get viagra title=”http://www.geeks.com/techtips/2008/techtips-05OCT08.htm”>Google Chrome has over 40 URL shortening extensions that work with a variety of services. Most of them only work with a single service, though. My favorite is  Bit.ly Shorten URL. It's very simple: go to a Web site, and click the bit.ly icon in Chrome's address bar (it's a small blowfish). You're taken to the bit.ly site, and you have your shortened URL. No muss, no fuss.

Opera only has one URL shortening widget: Simple URL. The widget only works with a service called simurl. But don't let that hold you back. You enter the URL that you want to shrink in the Simple URL widget and then click Make Link to get a 22-character URL. You can also specify an identifier for the URL, up to 10 characters long, that lets you track the URL later. Just click the My URLs tab on the widget, type the identifier in the field, and click Get My URLs. Of course, you'll have to remember your identifiers.

Earlier, I mentioned that some shortened URLs may point to unsavory sites or sites containing malware. LongURL helps you get around this by expanding a short URL and giving you information about it.

If you use Firefox, you can download an extension that will expand a short URL without having to go to the LongURL Web site.

Summing up

URL shorteners aren't for everyone. But for anyone who needs to use one, a URL shortener is an invaluable tool. It makes using microblogging services a lot easier, and makes it more convenient to share interesting links that might get broken when you copy and paste them into an email or anywhere else.

5 Must-Have Google Chrome Extensions

by Scott Nesbitt – January 17, 2010

In just a couple of years of existence, Google Chrome has come a quite a way. From a niche and geeky apps, Chrome is positioning itself as a rival to Firefox and Internet Explorer. Recently, it passed Apple’s Safari to become the number three browser on the Web.

When I talk to Firefox users, they say that they want to switch to Chrome; but the only thing that’s holding them back is Chrome’s lack of add-ons and extensions. That used to be the case. But over the last year or so, Chrome has gained a sizable number of extensions. While not as numerous as those for Firefox, Chrome’s extensions are nothing to sneeze at.

Just a heads up for all you Mac fans out there: Google Chrome Extensions are not supported on Mac just yet. I expect they will available very soon.

This TechTip looks at five extensions for Google Chrome that any geeky Web surfer will find indispensable.

Before you begin

To use the extensions, you’ll need a recent beta version of Chrome. Versions are also available for Mac and Linux.

Installing extensions is easy. Just go to the official Google extension repository. If you want to find out which extensions you have installed, type chrome://extensions in the browser’s address bar. As well as displaying a list of extensions, you can also disable or remove them from this page. If any of your extensions have options, you can click the Options button beside the name of the extension and configure it.

With the prelims out of the way, let’s get to the extensions.

Metrist

There’s no denying that Twitter has become a powerful tool for personal communication. And for companies to communicate with customers and to market themselves. Even Geeks.com has a Twitter feed! As a previous TechTip mentioned, why log in to Twitter when you can use something better?

Metrist is a Twitter client that sits on Chrome’s toolbar. When new tweets are posted, Metrist lets you know how many there are. From there, you just click the icon and compact interface pops out.

You can not only read tweets, but post them too. You can also reply to tweets, view tweets that mention you (Twitter’s @mentions), and re-post tweets of interest. In fact, Metrist is the easiest Twitter client I’ve encountered – either on the desktop, in a browser, or on a mobile device.

Google Mail Checker Plus

Gmail. It’s addictive. And it’s incredibly useful. Most people I know who use Gmail never go back to using any other Web-based mail service.

To be honest, I find logging into Gmail to check my email to be a chore. When I mainlined Firefox, I used an extension called Gmail Notifier to check my Gmail accounts. I’ve tried a few Chrome extension, and the best of the lot is Google Mail Checker Plus.

Like Metrist, Google Mail Checker Plus is very simple. It sits on the toolbar and when new messages come in, it displays the number of unread emails in your inbox just below the extension’s icon.

Click the icon to get a preview of the unread messages. You get to see the subject and first line of each message. Click on a message to open it in Gmail. You can also mark a message as read or delete it. The extension also allows you to archive messages or to mark them as spam. Be careful with the latter – I accidentally did that with an email while writing this TechTip and got a bit frantic when I couldn’t find it.

My only gripe with Google Mail Checker Plus is that it only supports one Gmail address. There are people, like me, who have two addresses. Some people even have more than that. The ability to check multiple Gmail addresses would be a nice addition to this extension.

Bit.ly URL Shortener

If you microblog, then you know that adding a URL to an interesting Web site can take your post over the 140 character limit. for Twitter. Some URLs are longer than 140 characters! Thankfully, there’s a small cottage industry on the Web that develops services that shorten URLs. One of the most popular of these is bit.ly.

Using bit.ly involves copying a URL, going to the bit.ly site, pasting the URL into a field, and then clicking Shorten. That’s a lot of work. The Bit.ly URL Shortener extension cuts the amount of work down to one click.

The extension puts the bit.ly icon (a blowfish) on your address bar. When you go to a site, you click the icon and it’s immediately shortened by bit.ly, ready for posting on a microblogging site like Twitter or to be pasted into an email or instant message.

It’s fast and it’s flexible. But the Bit.ly URL Shortener doesn’t work with URLs secured using HTTPS.

As a quick aside, what happens if you want to expand those shrunken URLs before you click them? Check out the Explode extension, which does just that.

SmoothScroll

Not every extension – whether for Google Chrome or otherwise – requires you to interact with it. Some, like SmoothScroll, work in the background to make your browsing experience that much better. Or, in this case, smoother.

If you use your keyboard or the scroll wheel on your optical mouse to move through Web pages, you might notice some delay or flickering. SmoothScroll gets rid of that.

The options page for SmoothScroll contains settings for both your mouse and your keyboard.

You can change settings like the number of frames per second to display, the speed of animations, and the number of frames to display whenever you press the PgUp and PgDn keys. The default settings work well for me. You’ll probably want to experiment with the setting to suit your own needs.

AdBlock

While I have nothing against making money, I do have problems with a lot of the ads that I see on the Internet. Not just pop up or pop under ones, either. Banner ads. Large, gaudy ads that distract from what I’m trying to read or trying to buy. Annoying Flash ads. That kind of thing. AdBlock gets rid of that kind of thing and makes my Web surfing cleaner and faster.

Like SmoothScroll, AdBlock works in the background. Its developer claims that AdBlock not only stops the usual types of ads that you run into on the Web, but also ads on Facebook and even the text ads that appear in Google search results. Not being a Facebook user, I can’t vouch for the effectiveness of that feature. But I’ve yet to run into pop-up or pop-under ads since installing AdBlock.

The options page for AdBlock allows you to subscribe to two pre-configured filter lists. You can also point it to another Web-based filter list that you might know or want to use. You can find generic viagra without prescription new ones by doing a search for the term adblock filter list . You can also blacklist or whitelist Web sites. Very simple, but very effective.

Summing up

The list of extensions available for Google Chrome is steadily growing. The five (plus one) discussed in this TechTip really only scratch the surface. If you want to expand Chrome’s capabilities, try playing with as many extensions as you see fit. You’ll definitely find more than a couple that meet your needs.

Do you use Google Chrome? What are your favorite extensions? Share them by leaving a comment or discussing them in the forums.

Should I Upgrade My Web Browser?

By Bryan Lambert – Sunday, May 3, 2009

The car I drive is a beautiful bright yellow Mustang convertible with big bold racing stripes, while the car that my neighbor drives is a small, economical silver Toyota Prius. While the cars will get you from point A to B with no problems, they do it in different ways. The Mustang looks “cool”, it drives “cool” and it gets you to point B in “cool” while the Prius drives solid, is an engineering marvel and gets you from point A to B with quiet, fuel efficient “coolness.” Internet browsers are very much the same, they (for the most part) will get you from point A to B – but how you arrive can be totally different factors of cool.

While a lot of this Tip may be more subjective than objective, it will give you a good idea of different ways to arrive at point B (so to speak) with your internet browser.

Internet Exploder

Where else to start the discussion of browsers than with the defacto standard for browsers – Internet Explorer (currently with nearly 67% of the browser market share). The reason that it is the biggest (much to the European Unions consternation) is that it is bundled with Microsoft’s Windows operating system. While it’s not necessarily the first browser available, or (in many persons' opinions) the best browser available, it is still used by many, many people. Microsoft just recently launched Internet Explorer version 8, and now they are starting to include it in their automatic updates for Windows (no need to fear if you are in love with version 7 of Internet Explorer, the update is an “opt in” type, where you get to choose if you want it installed). The newest incarnation of Internet Explorer offers some very nifty “innovations.” You’ll note that the word innovations is in quotes – this is because they are innovations for Internet Explorer, but not necessarily browsers in general. These innovations make it well worth the upgrade over Internet Explorer 7. A word of caution though, Internet Explorer 8 will run rather s.l.o.w.l.y on some “lesser” (read that slower) processors.

As a side note, if for some reason you are still running Internet Explorer 6, do it a favor and put it out of its misery– upgrade to another browser – ANY OTHER BROSWER than Internet Explorer 6. The faster that this malware loader masquerading as a browser with its antiquated HTML (the basic language of the web) rendering engine goes away, the better off the whole world will be. Now that Internet Explorer 8 is out, it has some users wondering just what else is out there. Fortunately, there are terrific alternatives to Internet Explorer.

Alternative Browsers – AKA: Browsing the Browsers

When running Microsoft Windows (or really whatever operating system you have), it is good to remember that there are always alternatives to the browser that your computer shipped with. The really cool thing about internet browsers is that several can be loaded onto a computer at the same time. Though they may try to vie for being the top dog (that is, the default browser), they will peacefully coexist. This means that along side Internet Explorer you can run one or more of the alternative browsers (even at the same time as one another). Some of the major browsers that you may want to consider are: Mozilla’s Firefox, Google’s Chrome, Apple’s Safari or Opera (made by Opera – who also make a popular mini version of their browser that can be used on many cell phones). A really nice thing about running multiple browsers is that if a particular browser may have a problem rendering (displaying) a web page, you can always launch another browser to see if the problem is that web page or perhaps the browser.

Speaking of other operating systems, if you are running Apple's OSX, then your default browser is Safari, and if you are running some version of Linux (like Ubuntu), then your default browser is usually Firefox. In addition to these browsers, there are several smaller builds as well as "skins" that go over existing browsers. What do these browsers' offer that Internet Explorer may not offer? Where do we start? All are pretty much faster; all are highly customizable, and all are innovative. In fact, many of these browsers innovations usually show up in Internet Explorer a little down the road. All are free to download and use, and as mentioned all can run on the same machine at the same time. If you have not had a chance to run them, I’d highly recommend downloading them all and giving cheap viagra overnight them a whirl. When you install them, they will even conveniently import your favorites and other options directly from Internet Explorer – so you don’t have to waste time “rebuilding” them.

Another terrific feature that these alternative browsers offer is that most of them are built with cross platform use in mind, thus while Internet Explorer (from version 6 forward) only runs on Windows machines, Opera and Firefox will run on Windows, OSX and Linux machines; Chrome and Safari currently have OSX and Windows versions (note that Chrome is still in beta for OSX). But, whatever browser you choose, be sure to get the most recent update for that version so that you have the latest security fixes installed. This is much less of an issue than in years past in this age of automatic updates – but it is always worthwhile to check every once in a while. For a list of some other alternative (and lesser known) browsers available, you can always check the terrific Wikipedia article on “Comparison of Internet Browsers.”

Final Thoughts

While this Tech Tip offered a quick overview of internet browsers in general, we also have some older Tech Tips on specific browsers (such as Chrome) that are worth a look. It is true that while these browsers will get you from point A to point B (figuratively speaking), they all do it a little differently and with their own version of “cool”. Also, while reading about a browser may be good, we encourage you to go ahead and give some of the alternatives a test drive – you may be surprised that you like what you find and that you’re happy trading in your current browser for a different "set of wheels".