Tag: URL

FluffyApp for Windows is a terrifically easy way to share screenshots and files online. Since it arrived with its CloudApp-for-Windows goodness, developer Richard Wang has been busy adding new features -- including several incredibly useful ones in version 0.8.7 and 0.8.8. For starters, FluffyApp now supports region selections, so you're no longer limited to full-desktop or program-window ...

Using the little-used and relatively unknown soft hyphen, spammers are pumping out malicious sites with domain names that bypass normal URL filtering methods. Some browsers -- and it's not clear from Symantec's post which Web browsers are affected, other than Firefox 2 -- simply ignore soft hyphens (HTML entity ­) found in URLs. A spammer can then create a link that looks like the real ...

Other browsers like Chrome and Opera can do it, and they've been doing it for ages. There are add-ons that let Firefox do it, but if it's such a useful feature, why hasn't it been included out-of-the-box? "It" is paste and go, and like sync functionality, it has finally been permanently bolted on to Firefox. In recent nightly builds of Firefox 4, you can right-click to paste a URL and go to it ...

There's a big crop new extensions showing up which take advantage of Google Chrome's new context menu API, and that's great news for those of you who can't live without your right-click menu. You can see a pair of newer extensions in my screenshot -- and while I'm not certain I'll be using the tab switcher, Copy Short URL is probably here to stay. Just right-click a link and left-click and ...

Looking for a simple way to push websites from your desktop browser to your iPhone? If you're using Google Chrome (or Chromium), you might want to take a look at the Prowl extension. You'll need to sign up on the official Prowl website first and generate an API key for yourself. Once you've got that, grab the extension and add your key in its options screen. After that, simply click the cat ...

Fur.ly is a slick looking service that takes multiple URLs and spits back one short URL (I got http://fur.ly/1b3b when I tried it). When someone clicks your URL, they are directed to the first site, and they will see a Digg-like bar at the top of the screen. The bar shows that you're currently viewing site "1 of 4," and it gives you Next/Previous buttons that you can click to switch to the next ...

I'm blown away by how many of my customers have three or four chat programs installed on their computers. I'm even more blown away by how many of them wind up with malware after letting their curiosity get the best of them and clicking a link some unknown user sends via those chat apps. If only they'd switch to something smarter, like a multi-network app...and maybe one that had some kind of ...

Download Squad readers haven't been shy about voicing their general distaste for the bazillion different short URL services out there. As if you needed another reason, a new report shows -- in USA Today style graphical goodness -- just how much they suck. Over at WatchMouse, you'll find a rundown comparing 14 popular options including goo.gl, tr.im, bit.ly, and the other usual suspects. The ...

Hot on the heels of both Goo.gl and Fb.me, there's now a Youtu.be! Its sole purpose: shorter YouTube links. There isn't really a lot more to this one, other than a brief explanation of how they work: Take the 'key' from the end of a YouTube video URL -- The key, in the URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0 would be 'oHg5SJYRHA0' Stick it on the end of YouTu.be -- and... voila! ...

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 ...

I'm not a big fan of status bars in browsers. Most of the time, they're just wasting 20 or so pixels of vertical display space. That doesn't mean I want to miss out on the functions the status bar provides - like displaying the destination of links I hover over. The URL Tooltip addon offers a simple remedy for that. Once installed, you'll see a tooltip balloon whenever you park your pointer ...

As expected, the international agency that regulates internet domain names has approved a new rule that allows URLs to be written using non-Latin characters. In other words, native speakers of Arabic, Chinese, Greek, Hindi, and other languages will be able to spell out web addresses using their oown alphabets. Roughly 1.6 billion internet users speak languages that don't use Latin characters. ...

There are web pages written in virtually every living language. If you read Japanese, Korean, Arabic, or Hebrew, odds are you can find web sites written in your native tongue. But in order to find them, you'll probably have to enter a string of Western characters into your browser's address bar. That's because up until now, the organization that oversees domain names has only accepted URLs ...

Here's a bit of ground breaking news for you. Facebook, known for their popular social networking website and recently flurry of product and service enhancements, has made possibly the biggest change yet. With over 50 million vanity names reserved since the social networking website started allowing users to pick their own unique URL, they have now announced that the names can be used to sign ...

URL shorteners, while convenient, are bad for the web. They hide the true destination that they are pointing to, giving bad guys yet another tool in their arsenal, while conditioning web users to blindly trust the links they are clicking on. Further, as the debacle with tr.im showed us, URL shortening services aren't necessarily permanent. It's no coincidence that the rise in popularity of URL ...