

The Shortest URLs - ssclafani
http://tinyarrows.com/

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nostromo
If you actually use the short url you are presented with a interstitial page
for 10 seconds and prompted to sign up. Sorry, but that's kind of lame when
compared to bit.ly and the like. (My example: <http://➡.ws/shopobot>)

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AjithAntony
I think the "interstitial" is just a courtesy to the user to preview the URL.
There is a link on that page that offers to "never show previews." Seems to
work, but of course it probably must be cookie based and be selected again if
the cookie is not available.

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aboodman
I didn't understand this UI at first. URL shorteners are very common and they
always have the same UI: Enter long URL, get short URL. This UI has an extra
step that is small and somewhat hidden, so I kept missing it and wondering why
nothing was happening.

Once I get past that, how am I supposed to find a unique URL? All obvious
combinations have already been taken. It seems like it would be better to
generate a short URL based on words in the destination page's title or
something. That way the server can take responsibility for generating
something unique, short, and memorable.

Finally, it seems disingenuous to market this as "shortest URLs on earth".
Only until all the short ones that are easy to guess get taken. If you want to
guarantee that users get the shortest URLs possible, it would be better to
generate them - that way you can use all possible strings.

Other (mostly terrible) ideas for guaranteeing "shortest URLs on Earth":

* Buy lots of short domains, so that you can use the short combinations on all of them.

* Expire the short URLs. Charge extra for permanent ones. The expired ones can be reused.

* Make the short URLs language-specific and vary depending on the request language.

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inportb
>Expire the short URLs.

If you do so, you break the implied permanence of URL's. Users (who you give
the resulting short URL's to) would be very confused when they get directed to
a totally different site.

Though... I admit that we often use URL shorteners as a temporary device, and
do not actually need to keep them beyond a few minutes or hours. I suppose it
would be better to use long/descriptive URL's for the more permanent links,
but then we would not need this service.

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aboodman
Totally agree, hence the "mostly terrible". I was just brainstorming about how
to achieve the guarantee "shortest URLs on Earth" if that was one's goal.

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billybob
This thread: <http://➡.ws/ㅅ퍥>

Meta: <http://➡.ws/testing12>

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jawns
I think the novelty factor is great.

The way I see it, this isn't necessarily a tool to generate the shortest URLs
by character count ... it's more a way of demonstrating the sorts of
characters that are valid in domain names, and just how short a domain name
can be.

I chose ✩.ws/shaun -- and I think it looks cool!

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jawns
I should mention that when I tried to sign up for an account, I got an
unhelpful PHP error.

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jerfelix
OK, so I am trying to tell someone by phone how to get to my webpage. How do I
do that?

"Key in Right Arrow.ws/abc"

Yeah, that'll work.

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sdfjkl
Complimentary Unicode snowman: <http://➹.ws/☃>

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HN_Addict
Bug report: This service generates case insensitive URLs.

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Kwpolska
Okay, fine, but how the hell is someone supposed to TYPE this address? Better
yet: >.ws/ass is being redirected to Google search by Chrome.

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tamberg
+1. Using Unicode in URIs is a _very_ bad idea. It's essential that an URI can
be written by hand on a napkin and entered into a computer again later,
without any ambiguity.

