Dateline: Wed Mar 25
Since posting the content below, I learned of another sweet way to "tiny-ize."
I use Ping.fm to update all my social networks at once. It's quite convenient. I just noticed today, though, that if I enter any URL, Ping.fm will shorten it automatically before posting.
Brilliant!
:::
If you already know about this neat service, you can stop reading now. But if you don't...
Know how sometimes you find some fantastic information buried deep within a site? And you're just dying to tell a friend (or even your spouse) about it? But lo and behold, the URL is so long it's a pain for the recipient to have to cut and paste it into their browser. Well, that's where TinyURL enters the picture.
The TinyURL homepage includes a form that's used to submit a long URL for shortening. All you have to do is paste the URL into the form and...presto change-o a tiny URL is returned to you! The shorter URL forwards users to the long URL. Genius, right?
I've been using the TinyURL service for ages. It's perfect for Twitter posts, of course. But recently I discovered there's a Firefox addon that makes creating a TinyURL even easier.
The TinyURL Creator is accessible in the Firefox Tools menu and in the
right-click (Command-click on a Mac) context menu. You can even add it to your toolbars as an
icon (View > Toolbars > Customize), which is what I did. Now, when I'm on a page I want to "tiny-ize," I just click the TinyURL icon and it does the rest for me. (There are addons for other browsers as well.)

Hurrah for tiny urls!
later...
Recent Comments