LinkPeelr website and Google Chrome extension un-shorten short URLs

I thought the Web had gotten over the irritating conception that omitting vowels from domain names somehow makes them sound cooler. Alas, LinkPeelr proves me wrong.

Domain name aside, this is a handy service. You feed it with a shortened URL, click Peel, and you get to see where it leads. A nice feature is the ability to easily repeat the process. This is handy in case a shortened URL points to another shortened URL, which only then points to the actual destination. In this case, all you do is simply hit Peel again, and LinkPeelr reveals the destination once more.

I took Download Squad's URL and shortened it with goo.gl, and then I took the goo.gl URL and shortened that with bit.ly, and LinkPeelr worked as advertised. It was very fast, too.

Perhaps more useful than the site itself is its Chrome extension. After installing it, you can hover over any shortened URL and get a nice-looking tooltip with its destination. I say "nice-looking" because it's not styled as a default Windows tooltip; they've applied their own formatting, and it's rather swanky. The only niggle I've experienced with the add-on is that it truncates URLs that are too long, which it really shouldn't do.

Tags: add-ons, bitly, google chrome, GoogleChrome, linkpeelr, shortened