

One-Day Project: ctxt.us - url shortener with context - TravisLS
http://ctxt.us

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TravisLS
I know, just what the world needs, another URL shortener. Still, I was tired
of being confronted with links on twitter like: "Coolest thing ever -
<http://short.url/12345>. So in order to add a little context to my links, I
created my own shortener. Give it a shot and let me know what you think.

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benhoyt
Guess you didn't know about my <http://DecentURL.com> \-- which does more or
less the same thing. Though that was inspired by a comment on reddit, not so
much by a real need. :-)

DecentURL gives even more context -- it inserts the domain like yours, but
also grabs the page <title> and uses a short form of that as the link part (or
you can type in your own, shorter one).

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vaporstun
While both show some context, DecentURL is not a shortener. For example, I
took the URL of this comments thread and stuck in in both yours and ctxt.us:

Original - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=731637>

DecentURL.com - [http://news.ycombinator.decenturl.com/hacker-news-one-day-
pr...](http://news.ycombinator.decenturl.com/hacker-news-one-day-project)

ctxt.us - <http://ctxt.us/news.ycom/A>

In fact, yours lengthened the URL quite a bit. Not that DecentURL is not
without its application, but your claim that it is the same as ctxt.us is not
really valid. I quite enjoy the fact that this is a way to have your cake (a
short url) and eat it too. (actually know what the hell you're clicking on)

Props to ctxt.us.

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benhoyt
You're right -- DecentURL is not a shortener. You can do some shortening with
it, but its main goal is to make _decent_ URLs, not _tiny_ ones. So ctxt.us
has it's place -- I stand corrected. :-)

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kineticac
One-Day Project, that's kind of the trend these days! We also built a URL
Shortener recently in a day, with the One Day App event. The challenge is fun,
and makes you narrow your features down to something doable in a day. Good
work.

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shortformblog
Great idea. Just tried it. You should consider adding metrics to it down the
line, but I bet you that you might find an audience for it.

Gonna throw it on my blog to give it some cool Twitter points. :D

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TravisLS
Glad you liked it. Thanks for the shout-out on your blog / twitter.

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Xichekolas
See Also: <http://twi.bz/>

