

Rate My App: Build Time = 342 Minutes - nick007

It was a weekend project. 
How's it feel, what's it missing?<p>http://qzip.in
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dxjones
How about every second year CS student write a URL shortening service on the
web. Then we should have lots of them.

Then, how about every third year CS student write a paper discussing why URL
shortening services are a bad thing.

Maybe fourth year CS students could write a program to spider the web looking
for broken web links that depended on the (now-defunct) URL shortening
services they set up in second year.

Ok, ... sorry to be so snarky.

342 minutes. Nice job.

You "shortened" the time to build a URL shortening service.

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tlrobinson
I'd say URL shorteners belong in the realm of the "information technology
program" department, as my school called it, not CS... but otherwise I agree
with you.

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tamersalama
You're lucky. My company used to name it "CPU" department.

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Zarathu
If you're asking for an opinion from the entrepreneur in me, I'd tell you to
go get a job at Starbucks and stay as far away from the Web as possible.

If you're asking for an opinion from the programmer in me, I'd give you a pat
on the back and buy you lunch.

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breck
Really? I've made a lot more from URL shorteners than someone makes at
Starbucks.

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bemmu
I tried to figure out how linkrap.com makes money. At least it doesn't seem to
replace Amazon links with affiliate ones, so will you reveal the trick?

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breck
A lot of sites use the code behind linkrap(the linkrap.com site itself hasn't
been touched in months).

There are a few different business models at work.

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sammcd
Man whoa, where is all this hate coming from? Good job, under 6 hours isn't
bad at all. I think it looks great to have launched projects up on the web as
part of a resume.

If I had a suggestion it would be to automatically show me the "tracking"
stats.

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enneff
Just what we needed. Another URL shortener.

What's the point?

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ashleyw
Why is it a bad thing? It's better to have tons of shortening services, than a
few big ones. Just to spread the risk incase one goes down.

If tinyurl.com or bit.ly went down right now, half of the links on Twitter
would go dead...

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thomaspaine
If I'm using a url shortener and worried about my links dying, I'm pretty sure
that I trust tinyurl or bit.ly to be around longer than 99% of the url
shorteners that have popped up in the last two weeks.

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patio11
Well, your call on how to spend your time, but if you were willing to bump
that up to about 2342 minutes you could have written something people would
actually pay for, and you'd get a bit of experience on the non-programming
parts of running a business in the bargain.

As to what's it is missing: I'm guessing the anti-spam measures in place are
kind of lacking, but I'm not going to exploit it to test.

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blainator
At first I was not amused by another URL shortener.

Now I respect you for having the guts to post it here. Props to you.

The only thing that you should add is an optional email address input. Now you
can contact the people that are using your app. For instance, if you wanted to
email everyone after you rolled out a new feature. Like a new feature that
enables your app to email the link you just created to yourself. Maybe is
sends another email after 10,25,50,100 visits to let you know.

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ramchip
Perhaps it could check if a link has already been added. Also return any qzip
URL as itself.

These don't matter a whole lot for a weekend project though.

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nick007
nice idea... might add that

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Vipsy
I would like it to, 1.copy the short-url to clipboard directly. 2.provide a
firefox addon to make short urls directly without visitng website.

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nick007
hey, this one makes it easier to see how many clicks your links is getting.
does that count for anything?

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rrhyne
Counts that you finished and launched a project. Keep using it, post it
anywhere you need to and maybe you get enough users to sell it.

Or, go ahead and try to sell it over and over again to anyone who wants to
start a URL service.

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vyrotek
While there are a lot of these services out there already, I think it looks
and works great. Especially for doing it in 342 minutes.

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jpcx01
Nice job. Simple and functional. Just as good as any of the other shortening
services.

Couple points. Bad domain name (IMO) and I'm not entirely sure it'll stay
around. Do you plan on keeping it hosted? Someone would need to know you plan
on staying online and operational if they were going to post something using
it.

Want to post the source?

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GVRV
Great work considering the time. (just judging the website, not whether the
need exists for another URL shortner cause the title says "Rate my App", not
"Give me your opinion on URL Shortners"). Anyways, can you tell me where you
got your .in domain from, I'm looking for a good registrar? Thanks.

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nick007
godaddy has them available now ($6)

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gaoshan
I tried to "shorten" <http://qzip.in/> and got <http://qzip.in/h4>. ;)

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cnu
I think he has fixed it now. I tried it and it did nothing.

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gaoshan
Oh they joy of edge cases... try <http://www.com> (that is a valid url by the
way... points to some crappy parked page so don't bother visiting it).

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subhabose
It was a refreshing sight after going through so many URL shortening websites
to find www.aafter.com. The website is the first of its kind in the entire web
shortening websites to generate two smaller URLs as you type one lengthy URL
in the search box. Either of the smaller URLs could be used to access the
website instead of writing the lengthy URL and are quite easy to remember.

Tony Smith

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sfphotoarts
why'd it take you so long? :)

Seriously though, good job, nice clean design, fast performing and seems to
work (always important). As for usefulness in a world full of url shortening
services I'm more skeptical about, but as a fun/school project its a good job.

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danbmil99
heh, I thought you meant compile time.

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jimbob72
is a url shortening service the newest "hello wrold i cna rite programm"? sure
feels like it.

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vorador
By the way, what framework/language did you use to develop it ?

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chanux
Pretty good. The favicon is xampp icon.

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mstefff
342 should have been 60

