
Show HN: Shortlink – Local, easy to remember URL aliases - mikeshi42
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/shortlink/apgeooocopnncglmnlngfpgggkmlcldf
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discreditable
Reminds me of the bookmark keyword feature from Firefox. It's possible to hack
into Chrome by setting sites as search providers.

[http://lifehacker.com/5476033/how-to-set-keyword-
bookmarks-i...](http://lifehacker.com/5476033/how-to-set-keyword-bookmarks-in-
google-chrome)

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mikeshi42
Yup! I've tried this solution myself but just found it incredibly hacky and
un-intuitive. I hope the nicer UX (hotkeys!) allows for a better experience.
In the future I hope to plan to have better syncing (cloud, sync into a
traditional bookmark for mobile use), x-platform, share w/ others, tighter
omnibar integration, etc. But you're right that there are reasonable solutions
out there currently, but I hope Shortlink provides a lower barrier to entry
and less configurations to fuss over.

As for Firefox, I'm not really a user myself, I've just tried it real quick
and it seems like you have to type quite a bit to get the omnibar(?) to
prioritize the bookmark result over the other autocompletes, as for shortlink
you can type m/[shortlink] and be guaranteed to hop over to the site you
saved. Good food for thought though!

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discreditable
> it seems like you have to type quite a bit to get the omnibar(?) to
> prioritize the bookmark result over the other autocompletes

Not exactly. Once you set the keyword, you can type the keyword and press
enter. Here I use hn to reach Hacker News and sd to reach Slashdot:
[http://imgur.com/a/EaRCo](http://imgur.com/a/EaRCo)

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mikeshi42
Got it! Didn't realize you set them in properties. I guess to differentiate, I
could work on shortlink-only search queries in the omnibar as well (and more
powerful organization). Thanks for the demo!

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orliesaurus
"Currently has a 16 link limit, want more? Premium will be coming soon!"

Mmmh - but why? Surely make the limit appear when you actually have PREMIUM
not before?

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mikeshi42
To be honest, I was having serious trouble parsing through Chrome's absolutely
terrible docs relating to paywalling features. I just gave up and decided I
should validate a market for something like this exists before I invest into
bothering to slog through the entire monetization process.

If you hit the limit, let me know, I'd love it if you love it that much, and
would love your feedback! I think I'll be looking for other venues of
monetization, or bumping up the limit a bit. That being said, I use the Chrome
store version of my extension too and I haven't hit the limit myself (yet!).

tl;dr I'm still figuring out a lot of the aspects of this, but wanted some
validation before moving forward with more iterations.

~~~
orliesaurus
if you're thinking about monetizing something with 9 installs you're
definitely a hustler ! good luck to you!

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mikeshi42
Hey guys! I just wrapped up the initial build of Shortlink. The idea is based
off of I hate touching the mouse and my workflow can become Cmd+T, Cmd+L,
m/[shortlink], Enter. No mouse needed for bookmarks, no overflow bookmarks
bar! :D

You can also use it as a link organization/searching utility, m/[invalid-
shortlink] will automatically pull up relevant shortlinks related to your
query, and you can always see all shortlinks by going to `m/` in your URL bar.

A couple ways I have it set up is for reference pages or dashboards (ex.
m/proj-ga => analytics.goog../#realtime/rt-overview/../) or things like gdrive
folders (m/projects => drive.google..), and of course memes (m/thisisfine =>
.../thisisfine.jpg).

tl;dr: A gif is worth a thousand thousand words
[https://gifyu.com/images/548oQzWj7s1.gif](https://gifyu.com/images/548oQzWj7s1.gif)

Hope everyone finds this useful! :D

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woodrowbarlow
> You can also use it as a link organization/searching utility.

You aren't selling this feature hard enough -- definitely mention it in the
extension description. If I were on Chrome (I'm on Firefox), that feature
would make me install it and use it instead of bookmarks.

Except... a 16-link limit? Seriously? That's not even enough to get a sense of
whether it's something I'd enjoy using. Most people have more than 16 tabs
open at any given time, not to mention bookmarks. If you're shipping this as a
fremium thing, give users enough to get hooked.

~~~
mikeshi42
Thanks for the feedback! I've found out that a lot of people use this
differently and I'm definitely still pivoting into the use case of
organization and search and out of "oh this will get to your URLs faster".
Thank you though, I'll be editing my description in a bit :P

As for 16, I hover under the limit myself, but I understand if that might seem
a bit low and that's fair. I was just experimenting with the idea of freemium
and didn't want to have a higher limit and lower it later and have more people
upset. I'll be looking to bump up the limit in the future (or possibly remove
it, since it might not even be a feature people care about.) In your opinion,
what do you think is a reasonable limit to set? (Or is it just unreasonable to
limit it at all?)

~~~
kinduff
In my honest opinion, this kind of tools should not be monetized through its
core functionality. My opinion as a user/developer, this is awesome, but 16? I
would build one myself. Try to search another way to monetize, some ads on
your landing page or additional features, but would not go to limit the core
functionality. Good luck!

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harrygallagher4
I'm all for keyboard-centric navigation, but what makes this better than
Holmes? It does the same thing, but lets you search all of your already
existing bookmarks, and there's no premium version/limitations.

Holmes:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/holmes/gokficnebmo...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/holmes/gokficnebmomagijbakglkcmhdbchbhn)

~~~
mikeshi42
Just had a chance to check out Holmes, you're right in that right now the
offerings are almost the same. I hope as I iterate a couple of times I'll have
more features that would differentiate further. I would argue that my search
is more complete than their 10 bookmark limit and shortlinks isn't based off
of fuzzy finding (which is I guess a negative for some people).

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ycmbntrthrwaway
Just use dmenu [1] and surfraw [2] bookmarks.

[1] [http://tools.suckless.org/dmenu/](http://tools.suckless.org/dmenu/)

[2] [https://surfraw.alioth.debian.org/](https://surfraw.alioth.debian.org/)

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known
Is it similar to archive.is

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mikeshi42
Not really, unless I've misunderstood what archive.is does. Shortlink allows
you to create an "alias" for a URL you visit often. Say you have a GA
dashboard that you go back to very often (something that you would usually
bookmark). You can create a shortlink that will point to that (ex. "m/ga").
Using this shortlink, you can type it in the URL bar in your browser and it'll
redirect you to the GA dashboard page.

