Shortening Your URLs

posted on 11/20/07 at 01:05:46 pm by Joel Ross

No matter what you think of Dave Winer, he is definitely an innovator and is constantly coming up with great ideas. His latest is a gem as well.

Every web app that produces long urls should provide a built-in url-shortening facility. The user interface would be similar to the one in Google Maps they call "Link To This Page." You click on it, and up pops a box containing an address you can use to point to the page.

He then goes on to show that if you go to http://www.amazon.com/wii, that will take you to Amazon's Wii page, which is actually a much, much longer URL.

From a technical standpoint, providing a shortened URL would be pretty simple - something you could add quickly. If you use the alphabet and numbers, just 4 characters gives you over 1.6 million links, and a 4 character string is fairly simple to remember.

This might have to be added to Tourneytopia this year. A short URL to your March Madness picks would make it a lot easier to share with your friends. And as I think about it, using your entry ID, something you already keep track of, as the shortened URL part, would make it even easier.

Categories: Develomatic, Development, Software