Tinyurl

Thanks to the free software project lilURL and one of its implementation at ur1, the problem with TinyURL is solved. Thanks Alexandre for the info. :-) So now http://www.poirrier.be/~jean-etienne/ can be short ( http://ur1.ca/04d) and free at the same time: free to use, and free to look at source code. Since I’m never fully satisfied (hmm, never say never), the next step would be an implementation of some “intelligence” in these short URLs (see Udi’s post). And since I never have time (or less and less), I’m a bit sad not to have that time to code a solution (which should be quite easy).

The problem with TinyURL.com is that its source code is not free. And I can’t find any other open services/projects that offers the same features (1). I realized this when trying to add a long link in a Twitter update (2, 3). A maximum of 140 characters doesn’t allow you to add much text around. And it seems that a lot of Twitter users are using the TinyURL.com service which allows you to translate a small URL it gives you to the full, “regular” URL. For example, http://www.poirrier.be/~jean-etienne/ (37 characters) becomes http://tinyurl.com/6kq84z (25 characters). ...