4 ms·

I had the same question. Until last week when I sent out a link to a google spreadsheet, and my awesome </sarcasm> Navy Marine Corps Intranet Windows XP/Outlook

I had the same question. Until last week when I sent out a link to a google spreadsheet, and my awesome </sarcasm> Navy Marine Corps Intranet Windows XP/Outlook 2007/Exchange system broke the link across two lines (but only after it was sent), and then every single recipient (about 100 physicians) said they couldn't see the document. I now use tinyurl.

jw84 16y ago
That's just NMCI's way of showing you love.
stevenbedrick 16y ago
Yeah, sending emails with absurdly-long links is just about the only use case I've found for URL shorteners. I find it particularly useful for links to Google Maps locations or direction sets.
makmanalp 16y ago
The thing is, it feels like even in those cases, the service should be shortening its own URLs.
- leek 16y ago
  > Google needed a url shortener for its own products where we knew the shortener wouldn’t go away Isn't that what this post is about?
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
ciupicri 16y ago
Why didn't you use a proper link in an HTML email?
- telemachos 16y ago
  Many people still prefer plain text email. I certainly do.
  - ryanjkirk 16y ago
    I prefer text email in theory. It's cleaner, simpler. Text for messages, that's how the web was meant to work, right? I also cringe when I purple text in Comic Sans, as well as other unmentionables. Yet, when I want to emphasize something, I hate using asterisks. It's not semantically correct, and it looks ugly. And how do you differentiate between underline and italics? For this reason I support HTML email.
    - pilif 16y ago
      Using asterisk for italics and underlines (_) for underlines is an age-old convention that predates the web and HTML email by years. I much prefer plaintext only mails. Not only are they readable on any device, I also don't have to be afraid of getting my machine infected by who-knows-what.
  - pornel 16y ago
    plaintext e-mail supports format=flowed (RFC3676) which allows lines to be arbitrarily long.
mfukar 16y ago
Mindless copy & paste for the win!

jw84 16y ago

That's just NMCI's way of showing you love.

stevenbedrick 16y ago

Yeah, sending emails with absurdly-long links is just about the only use case I've found for URL shorteners. I find it particularly useful for links to Google Maps locations or direction sets.

makmanalp 16y ago

The thing is, it feels like even in those cases, the service should be shortening its own URLs.

leek 16y ago
> Google needed a url shortener for its own products where we knew the shortener wouldn’t go away Isn't that what this post is about?

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

ciupicri 16y ago

Why didn't you use a proper link in an HTML email?

telemachos 16y ago
Many people still prefer plain text email. I certainly do.
- ryanjkirk 16y ago
  I prefer text email in theory. It's cleaner, simpler. Text for messages, that's how the web was meant to work, right? I also cringe when I purple text in Comic Sans, as well as other unmentionables. Yet, when I want to emphasize something, I hate using asterisks. It's not semantically correct, and it looks ugly. And how do you differentiate between underline and italics? For this reason I support HTML email.
  - pilif 16y ago
    Using asterisk for italics and underlines (_) for underlines is an age-old convention that predates the web and HTML email by years. I much prefer plaintext only mails. Not only are they readable on any device, I also don't have to be afraid of getting my machine infected by who-knows-what.
- pornel 16y ago
  plaintext e-mail supports format=flowed (RFC3676) which allows lines to be arbitrarily long.

mfukar 16y ago

Mindless copy & paste for the win!