Andrew Ferguson
Romping Around in Europe
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As I said before, I’ve created BURL (Better URL). It’s really more of proof of concept based on an article at Lifehacker on Tiny URL Etiquette. The issue with TinyURL and just about any other site similar to it is that all context is lost. If I post a link to http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=fad44098-8b73-4e06-96d4-d1eb70eacb44&displaylang=en, you can take one glance at it and know that it has something to do with Microsoft. However, if I post a link to http://tinyurl.com/4gdju, you have nothing. There is zero context to what is being linked to and you have to trust the sender of the link to provide that context. What I tried to do is maintain some of the context of the original link. A BURL link looks like this: http://burl.fergcorp.com/microsoft/6e1c1. Yes, it is longer but you now have context. And the best part is, all you still have to do is enter just the URL in. BURL automatically takes the domain name and makes that the context word.
Now a few notes on the programming side. This is just a proof of concept. I wrote the code in just a few hours and while I’ve done quite a bit of testing, I’ve not done enough to consider it final. So, if you come across any bugs or glitches, just let me know. Otherwise, enjoy!
Tags: BURL, context, etiquette, Lifehacker, proof of concept, TinyURL, URL
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now that’s just crafty. We use tiny url a ton in linux chats when we send people things because big long links look awful in irc windows. The context part could be handy.
but can you drag a button to your tool bar on your browser?
oh. got it. I had to drag it from this link on your page, as opposed to the site itself.
Thanks man, it’s great, and solves what I always thought to be the problem with TinyURL
Thanks again!
Good. Tiny was …well a bit too tiny…but size isn’t everything.
Andrew Ferguson dot NET ? More on BURL As I said before, I’ve created BURL (Better URL). It’s really more of proof of concept based on an article at Lifehacker on Tiny URL Etiquette. The issue with TinyURL and just about any other site similar to it is that all context is lost. If I
Praise for simple tools that do one thing really well: BURL is like TinyURL, in that it shortens long URLs but it also leaves some context so the recipient of your slick new URL knows what the hell you’re pointing them at. Nice workAndrew Ferguson! 26 Oct 05 Any Pandora users out there? If yes, look up my shared stations using
It appears that BURL is broken right now. It isn’t putting the “contextual” part of the URL in, which means it isn’t working at all.
Fixed. I changed one variable, but didn’t change the other variable. But it’s fixed now. Thanks for the heads up!
context!! yeah!! I got a TinyURL from a friend that not only did not work, but I had no idea just what the heck I was getting. love your idea. as an AOL user, I can insert hyperlinks right from the site, but some folks can’t open them and, well, URL’s get to be cumbersome. thanks for making the internet easier.