Tag: SHORTURL

McAfee has decided to get in to the short URL game. Why? Possibly because they were looking for an additional reason for techies to loathe them -- if there's one thing more hated than craptacular software, it's yet another URL truncator. The theory is that people will use McAfee's short URL service because the links are managed by a trusted recognized security company. I'll say this for ...

In response to a bunch of recent phishing scams on Twitter -- all of which took advantage of Direct Messages and shortened URLs -- Twitter has decided to launch its own URL shortener to boost security. The new shortener is called twt.tl -- little? Twittle? I think I get it! -- and it will allow Twitter to find malicious links as they're shortened, rather than waiting until they've been direct ...

We've written before on Download Squad about Bit.ly's plans to offer a premium service, including custom URL shorteners like the ones they provide for sites like The New York Times. Well, Bit.ly Pro has entered a public beta phase now, and you don't have to be the New York Times to get your own free, custom shortURL. All you have to do is sign up for a Bit.ly account and find a way to register ...

Bit.ly is the reigning champion of URL shorteners, largely thanks to its position as the default shortURL provider for Twitter. Twitter isn't the only bigtime site that will be relying on Bit.ly now, though. A new Pro version of the service, currently in beta, provides custom URL shorteners for web publishers, and it's starting with The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, and ...

While Google may not have intended their new Goo.gl short URL service to be used anywhere other than the Google Toolbar, I doubt they're too upset about developers figuring out how to tap into it. Three extensions have already popped up in the Google Chrome Extensions Gallery which offer Goo.gl truncation in your browser. ChromeMUSE, which I've been using for a little over a week, pushed an ...

digg_url = 'http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2009/12/14/facebook-google-bitly-url-shorten/'; tweetmeme_url = 'http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2009/12/14/facebook-google-bitly-url-shorten/'; tweetmeme_source = 'downloadsquad'; Well, bit.ly, you've had a good run. And while all the 20 and 30 somethings who Twitter with reckless abandon will probably stick with the venerable old ...

For quite some time we all wondered when developers would start rolling out Google Chrome extensions. It was pretty slow going at first, but things have started picking up lately -- possibly due to the imminent launch of the official Google Chrome Extensions Gallery. Gallery or not, I'm happy to keep checking out what's new at ChromeExtensions.Org. Today's find is ChromeMUSE, which adds ...

Tr.im's history is already a bit of an oddball saga: it was shut down, brought back to life days later, handed over from a company to one of the company's individual employees, and then made open source. Well, now the open source promise is becoming a reality, but not as quickly as developer Eric Woodward had hoped. He's announced the first open source release of Tr.im - if by "release," you mean ...

Still concerned about whether or not your favorite URL shortening service is going to go belly-up and leave you with a pile of broken links? Hedge your bets with MURLS. The tiny, portable application is plugged in to 28 different services including popular ones like bit.ly, tr.im, is.gd, and tinyurl. Each shortener is selectable in the MURLS options screen, so you can create as few or as many ...

Bit.ly dominates the URL shortener market due to its position as the default URL shortener on Twitter, but its features also measure up well against competitors. One area where Bit.ly loses out, though, is in the length of its base URL. Bit.ly is one more character than tr.im or ow.ly and two more than u.nu. Bit.ly is addressing that (relatively small) weakness by introducing j.mp, which is just ...

The drama around URL shorteners doesn't appear to be ending any time soon. Here's a quick recap, for those who haven't been following: Tr.im, the fourth most popular URL shortening service, shut down because of the insurmountable advantage its competitor, Bit.ly, gets as a result of being the default URL shrinker on Twitter. A couple of days later, Tr.im was back, still angry about the ...

In the aftermath of the quick shutdown and restart of popular URL shortening service Tr.im, several important players in the short URL market have joined an effort to archive short links in case other services shut down. The coalition is called 301works, and it will be run by Gnip. Other participants include Adjix, awe.sm, betaworks, Cligs, URLizer, and urlShort, and the most popular service ...

The recent shutdown and reopening of URL-shrinking service Tr.im drew a lot of attention to one of the most troubling questions about short URL sites: when one of them shuts down, what happens to the links? To avoid worrying about what a URL shortener might do with your links, you might want to scope out la petite url, a Wordpress plugin for creating tiny links using your own domain name. La ...

Tr.im, one of the most popular URL-shortening services, shut down last week because its owners saw no way to monetize the service in such a competitive market. Twitter's choice of Bit.ly as its default link-shrinker means that service dominates the market, with smaller players like Ow.ly abd Tr.im fighting over what's left. Tr.im has its supporters, though, and they apparently contacted Tr.im's ...

Tr.im, the popular URL shortener owned by Nambu, was apparently not popular enough for the company to see any future in it. Tr.im is shutting down, and links will redirect properly until at least the end of this year. The cost of development and server expansion outweighed the benefits to Tr.im's owners, according to a blog post, because users will never pay for shortURL services. Nambu also ...