

Tell HN: Solution to URL Shortners - dryicerx

tr.im went down, a great example. Lot of people get really defensive on this subject, but seriously other than twitter, there is rarely a need for shortners. You are depending the links validity completely on a 3rd party website which doesn't have a great business model to survive, not very smart. Bitching about it aside, a Solution:<p>URL Lengthener/Unrollers/Expanders.<p>I call upon web developers and the HN community to take action from the application/server side. There are already scripts available that converts the popular shortners to their original form. (which convert tr.im/12345 -&#62; realURL). Run this through you're DBs or inputs and clean out the mess.<p><pre><code>  - http://dentedreality.com.au/projects/slinky/
  - http://www.longurlplease.com/
  - Google got more</code></pre>
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yannis
Tim was right in 1998! But who reads 1998 articles? Cool URIs don't change
<http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI>. Tim told us so!

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astrodust
Maybe there's some way to publish an archive of all shortened URLs for
posterity, even .torrent. It's the least a service can do before turning the
lights out.

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mbrubeck
See also <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=753154> (from just two hours
earlier).

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noodle
yeah, i'll take issue with the assertion that there's rarely a need for
shorteners. for many, its not about the shortening, its about the statistics
gleaned from the service.

but yes, nice idea. i think there are a few other similar services out there,
though.

