6 ms·

Show HN: URL Shortener Optimized for QR Code

52 points by rmedaer 6y ago

nonsapreiche 6y ago
Very nice, how long the shortened URL will last? Is there a limit on the length of the URL?
- rmedaer 6y ago
  The shortened URL contains 25 characters. Actually it could be smaller but the goal is to generate the smallest QR code. To do so, a restricted set of characters is used. The result is a small QR code version 1. There is currently no limitation on input URL size. However you might reach some limitation (> 4096bytes) due to the current proxy.
  - strencher 6y ago
    great job! But, you didn't answer nonsapreiche's question about how long the shortened URL will last?
    - rmedaer 6y ago
      Right! Currently there is no plan to remove shortened URL. Meaning that the service keep shortened URL indefinitely.
kevincox 6y ago
What makes it "optimized for QR codes"?
- justin66 6y ago
  You were downvoted, but that question is the interesting thing about this. It'd be nice to know a little about how it works.
  - rmedaer 6y ago
    Would you be interested to read a blog post about how it works? I consider to write a few articles about each part of the project... if there are people to read them! ;-)
    - justin66 6y ago
      I am fairly content with your reply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24691042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24691042 But I am one of the people who would read a blog post elaborating further if that's something you chose to write. :)
- rmedaer 6y ago
  It generates the smallest QR Code possible (Version 1; size 21×21). Other URL shorteners generates bigger QR code (usually version 2 or 3)
  - flixic 6y ago
    Bit.ly code: https://bit.ly/3l9tI3w https://bit.ly/3l9tI3w (8 + 7 + 7 = 22 chars) Ku.ag code: https://ku.ag/t002te0h.y-e https://ku.ag/t002te0h.y-e (8 + 6 + 12 = 26 chars) Every string encodes to the same amount of “squares” in a QR code, so I see no reason to use your service.
    - LeoPanthera 6y ago
      > Every string encodes to the same amount of “squares” in a QR code That's not correct. QR codes have redundant pixels, and you can choose how much redundancy you want. That said, the default in most generators is the least amount of redundancy.
      - flixic 6y ago
        Every content byte encodes to the same amount of squares. Error correction bytes are “appended”. The point about every string being equal in the same configuration of a QR code still applies. As such, the shorter URL, the better.
        tinus_hn 6y ago
        Not every string uses the same amount of content bits per character. If you use only numbers you use 3 1/2 bit per character, if you use only numbers, uppercase letters and some limited punctuation it’s 5 1/2 bits per character. Otherwise it’s 8 bits per character but that’s a waste because most of the characters you can then represent can’t be used in a URL.
    - rmedaer 6y ago
      > Every string encodes to the same amount of “squares” (...) Actually the size of QR Code doesn't depend only on length of the string but also on charset used. For instance, the URLs generated at bit.ly are case sensitive, to encode the qr code you have to use "binary" input mode. For KUAG I'm using "Alphanumeric" input mode, it reduces the size of the QR code I'm generating however I restricted to a smaller subset of character. I understand it looks like a paradox; but a bit.ly shortened url leads to a bigger QR code than KUAG (even if the string is longer) See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code#Storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code#Storage for more details. Note: the shortened url I display is 'lowered' for esthetical reason. Edit: I forgot to mention the error-correction. But I don't think it's fair compare with other shorteners if they are not using the same error-correction level.
masukomi 6y ago
can we get an Open Source version of this so that we don't a) have to send traffic through your servers and b) hope that you keep providing the service and bandwidth indefinitely for free?
- rmedaer 6y ago
  Hi masukomi. Currently it's still a side project (started a few days). My plan included the following phases: 1. Idea + POC (solved technical issues) => Done 2. Build a MVP => Done 3. Get some feedback and see if there is any interest. => Here we are! 4. Based on feedback, add (premium) features but keep the basic service for free. So in summary; yes it will stay free, I might add some "acceptable" limitations but the goal is indeed to propose additional (non-free) features like well-known services (for instance Gitlab). So feel free to share your ideas, I would enjoy to answer and challenge them! Furthermore I plan to write a small survey to get more feedback. About the "Open Source" part: as a regular FOSS contributor, I do not exclude to publish sources. However, publishing sources means maintaining them. And I don't want to maintain a useless project. So currently I don't want to publish them. Hope it helps you to understand my strategy for this new experience!
  - ravi-delia 6y ago
    I mean, whatever people might pretend is true when they're lazy, you don't have to maintain anything you don't want to. If you just want to make the source public once and tell anyone who asks for bugfixes where they can stick it, that's your right.
- toast0 6y ago
  A URL shortener is not that hard to write. At the most basic level it's one table with key = the url blob and value = the url target. There's already several hits for 'open source url shortener' in the top results there's one with MIT and one with GPLv2, and several others that don't specify their license. This one is neat because the author chose to restrict to the qr code "alphanumeric" character set that includes a couple symbols to reduce bits per character in the encoding. Now that you're aware of that, you could certainly do that yourself or modify another shortener to do it.
delgaudm 6y ago
It may be interesting, but the generated URL[0] seems pretty scary to click, esp since the QR code shows the same. [0]Do you dare? https://ku.ag/xrjl6wr8i.ye https://ku.ag/xrjl6wr8i.ye
- DerekRobot 6y ago
  That looks like every phishing text I receive.
Jugurtha 6y ago
Hi. Are you generating revenue from this? If not, please consider having an enterprise offering. There are companies that are interested in this. We built something for a major company to send unique links to a customer base of 20+ million. They were blasting SMS offers and we helped them infer customer traits for next best offer, generate links, and send SMS using a template. You can make it really appealing if you write an API for it so they can hook it to their messaging systems and blast messages programmatically. Also, they wanted to have analytics (who clicked, from where, etc.) If you never sold to enterprise, here is a short Twitter thread pinned to my profile[0]. Check out enterpriseready[1], too. - [0]: https://twitter.com/jugurthahadjar/status/1310668293305499653 https://twitter.com/jugurthahadjar/status/131066829330549965... - [1]: https://www.enterpriseready.io https://www.enterpriseready.io
- rmedaer 6y ago
  Hi Jugurtha, Actually a REST API is already ready. I consider to offer premium services (API, link management, bulk generation, etc.) Could you send an email to info@ku.ag in order discuss more about it ? Kind regards,
  - Jugurtha 6y ago
    Sent.
TimLeland 6y ago
Confused about what makes this optimized for QR. Other shorteners such as https://t.ly/ https://t.ly/ have a shorter domain and they have an extension that allows you to shorten a url then easily share the qr code http://t.ly/extension http://t.ly/extension. They also offer an api etc.
BorisMelnik 6y ago
nice product and clean UI/UX - only part I don't love are the special chars in the URL. Browsers might be ok with it but people sometimes read URLs aloud over the phone or in person and could be easily misconstrued.
StavrosK 6y ago
Does anyone know of a (potentially hosted) shortener that supports deleting links and using your own aliases for them? Bonus points if I can use my own domain.
- donmcronald 6y ago
  Try rebrandly.com. I don't know what the pricing is like on the paid plans, but they have a free tier to try it out and I think it does all of the things you asked about.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dgivney 6y ago
  Hi StavrosK I launched a URL Shortener last month that supports custom keywords, deleting links & custom domains. The default domain is a grandfathered .com emoji domain that I thought looked like a Ninja Star so I called the service Ninja Linka (marketing writes itself really). Here's the homepage: https://ninjalinka.com https://ninjalinka.com More info in the API Docs: https://ninjalinka.com/docs/1.0/home https://ninjalinka.com/docs/1.0/home Out of interest, what is your use case for deleting your links?
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    Hey dgivney! That looks quite good, thanks! Is there a trial so I can try it out for a few days? It looks like I need to pay to even try the UI. Also, the star domain is interesting, but you may want to have an alternative as well. I usually use the links so I can type them on other people's computers to get access to my Dropbox, and hunting for an emoji on a computer is rather inconvenient... I want to delete the links mostly for tidiness, but I also need to edit them because I sometimes want to change where they point to (to different folders in my Dropbox, etc).
    - dgivney 6y ago
      Interesting use case, I see. You can use the URL shortener on the homepage to create links but yes, the custom keywords, custom domains and link analytics require a small one-off payment for personal use. I did this thinking it will prevent spam but I understand it's probably important - I will create some trail accounts and send you one this weekend.
lixtra 6y ago
Your service did not work as advertised. I asked for https://ku.ag/ https://ku.ag/ to be shortened but it got prolonged to https://ku.ag/5q6w9v1hnp*o https://ku.ag/5q6w9v1hnp*o Also I noticed that you generate a new link each time. Why?
- abiogenesis 6y ago
  Possibly to allow enterprise use, with separate stats for each shortened link.
  - rmedaer 6y ago
    You got the point.
emeraldd 6y ago
Somewhat related: What ever happened with the QR Code to url shortener patent lawsuits that were going on several years ago ... 2013ish I think? Is it still risking a lawsuit to use them? Context: https://www.paperspecs.com/caught-our-eye/beware-the-qr-code-patent-trap/ https://www.paperspecs.com/caught-our-eye/beware-the-qr-code...
- emeraldd 6y ago
  huh ... Seems like the patents might be expired? https://patents.google.com/patent/US8131597 https://patents.google.com/patent/US8131597 https://patents.google.com/patent/US6199048 https://patents.google.com/patent/US6199048
desireco42 6y ago
Love it. I like that code is small, google lens recognized it faster then usual and site opened fast. Kind of the code part ie. shortened url is weird and could use some humanization. But it is free, so it works for me.
rmedaer 6y ago
I would like to thank you for your feedback. If you still have a little bit of time, here is a quick survey to get more feedback about your needs! https://ku.ag/6dmohc20fvnd https://ku.ag/6dmohc20fvnd Kind regards,

52 points by rmedaer 6y ago

nonsapreiche 6y ago

Very nice, how long the shortened URL will last? Is there a limit on the length of the URL?

rmedaer 6y ago
The shortened URL contains 25 characters. Actually it could be smaller but the goal is to generate the smallest QR code. To do so, a restricted set of characters is used. The result is a small QR code version 1. There is currently no limitation on input URL size. However you might reach some limitation (> 4096bytes) due to the current proxy.
- strencher 6y ago
  great job! But, you didn't answer nonsapreiche's question about how long the shortened URL will last?
  - rmedaer 6y ago
    Right! Currently there is no plan to remove shortened URL. Meaning that the service keep shortened URL indefinitely.

kevincox 6y ago

What makes it "optimized for QR codes"?

justin66 6y ago
You were downvoted, but that question is the interesting thing about this. It'd be nice to know a little about how it works.
- rmedaer 6y ago
  Would you be interested to read a blog post about how it works? I consider to write a few articles about each part of the project... if there are people to read them! ;-)
  - justin66 6y ago
    I am fairly content with your reply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24691042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24691042 But I am one of the people who would read a blog post elaborating further if that's something you chose to write. :)
rmedaer 6y ago
It generates the smallest QR Code possible (Version 1; size 21×21). Other URL shorteners generates bigger QR code (usually version 2 or 3)
- flixic 6y ago
  Bit.ly code: https://bit.ly/3l9tI3w https://bit.ly/3l9tI3w (8 + 7 + 7 = 22 chars) Ku.ag code: https://ku.ag/t002te0h.y-e https://ku.ag/t002te0h.y-e (8 + 6 + 12 = 26 chars) Every string encodes to the same amount of “squares” in a QR code, so I see no reason to use your service.
  - LeoPanthera 6y ago
    > Every string encodes to the same amount of “squares” in a QR code That's not correct. QR codes have redundant pixels, and you can choose how much redundancy you want. That said, the default in most generators is the least amount of redundancy.
    - flixic 6y ago
      Every content byte encodes to the same amount of squares. Error correction bytes are “appended”. The point about every string being equal in the same configuration of a QR code still applies. As such, the shorter URL, the better.
      - tinus_hn 6y ago
        Not every string uses the same amount of content bits per character. If you use only numbers you use 3 1/2 bit per character, if you use only numbers, uppercase letters and some limited punctuation it’s 5 1/2 bits per character. Otherwise it’s 8 bits per character but that’s a waste because most of the characters you can then represent can’t be used in a URL.
  - rmedaer 6y ago
    > Every string encodes to the same amount of “squares” (...) Actually the size of QR Code doesn't depend only on length of the string but also on charset used. For instance, the URLs generated at bit.ly are case sensitive, to encode the qr code you have to use "binary" input mode. For KUAG I'm using "Alphanumeric" input mode, it reduces the size of the QR code I'm generating however I restricted to a smaller subset of character. I understand it looks like a paradox; but a bit.ly shortened url leads to a bigger QR code than KUAG (even if the string is longer) See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code#Storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code#Storage for more details. Note: the shortened url I display is 'lowered' for esthetical reason. Edit: I forgot to mention the error-correction. But I don't think it's fair compare with other shorteners if they are not using the same error-correction level.

masukomi 6y ago

can we get an Open Source version of this so that we don't a) have to send traffic through your servers and b) hope that you keep providing the service and bandwidth indefinitely for free?

rmedaer 6y ago
Hi masukomi. Currently it's still a side project (started a few days). My plan included the following phases: 1. Idea + POC (solved technical issues) => Done 2. Build a MVP => Done 3. Get some feedback and see if there is any interest. => Here we are! 4. Based on feedback, add (premium) features but keep the basic service for free. So in summary; yes it will stay free, I might add some "acceptable" limitations but the goal is indeed to propose additional (non-free) features like well-known services (for instance Gitlab). So feel free to share your ideas, I would enjoy to answer and challenge them! Furthermore I plan to write a small survey to get more feedback. About the "Open Source" part: as a regular FOSS contributor, I do not exclude to publish sources. However, publishing sources means maintaining them. And I don't want to maintain a useless project. So currently I don't want to publish them. Hope it helps you to understand my strategy for this new experience!
- ravi-delia 6y ago
  I mean, whatever people might pretend is true when they're lazy, you don't have to maintain anything you don't want to. If you just want to make the source public once and tell anyone who asks for bugfixes where they can stick it, that's your right.
toast0 6y ago
A URL shortener is not that hard to write. At the most basic level it's one table with key = the url blob and value = the url target. There's already several hits for 'open source url shortener' in the top results there's one with MIT and one with GPLv2, and several others that don't specify their license. This one is neat because the author chose to restrict to the qr code "alphanumeric" character set that includes a couple symbols to reduce bits per character in the encoding. Now that you're aware of that, you could certainly do that yourself or modify another shortener to do it.

delgaudm 6y ago

It may be interesting, but the generated URL[0] seems pretty scary to click, esp since the QR code shows the same. [0]Do you dare? https://ku.ag/xrjl6wr8i.ye https://ku.ag/xrjl6wr8i.ye

DerekRobot 6y ago
That looks like every phishing text I receive.

Jugurtha 6y ago

Hi. Are you generating revenue from this? If not, please consider having an enterprise offering. There are companies that are interested in this. We built something for a major company to send unique links to a customer base of 20+ million. They were blasting SMS offers and we helped them infer customer traits for next best offer, generate links, and send SMS using a template. You can make it really appealing if you write an API for it so they can hook it to their messaging systems and blast messages programmatically. Also, they wanted to have analytics (who clicked, from where, etc.) If you never sold to enterprise, here is a short Twitter thread pinned to my profile[0]. Check out enterpriseready[1], too. - [0]: https://twitter.com/jugurthahadjar/status/1310668293305499653 https://twitter.com/jugurthahadjar/status/131066829330549965... - [1]: https://www.enterpriseready.io https://www.enterpriseready.io

rmedaer 6y ago
Hi Jugurtha, Actually a REST API is already ready. I consider to offer premium services (API, link management, bulk generation, etc.) Could you send an email to info@ku.ag in order discuss more about it ? Kind regards,
- Jugurtha 6y ago
  Sent.

TimLeland 6y ago

Confused about what makes this optimized for QR. Other shorteners such as https://t.ly/ https://t.ly/ have a shorter domain and they have an extension that allows you to shorten a url then easily share the qr code http://t.ly/extension http://t.ly/extension. They also offer an api etc.

BorisMelnik 6y ago

nice product and clean UI/UX - only part I don't love are the special chars in the URL. Browsers might be ok with it but people sometimes read URLs aloud over the phone or in person and could be easily misconstrued.

StavrosK 6y ago

Does anyone know of a (potentially hosted) shortener that supports deleting links and using your own aliases for them? Bonus points if I can use my own domain.

donmcronald 6y ago
Try rebrandly.com. I don't know what the pricing is like on the paid plans, but they have a free tier to try it out and I think it does all of the things you asked about.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dgivney 6y ago
Hi StavrosK I launched a URL Shortener last month that supports custom keywords, deleting links & custom domains. The default domain is a grandfathered .com emoji domain that I thought looked like a Ninja Star so I called the service Ninja Linka (marketing writes itself really). Here's the homepage: https://ninjalinka.com https://ninjalinka.com More info in the API Docs: https://ninjalinka.com/docs/1.0/home https://ninjalinka.com/docs/1.0/home Out of interest, what is your use case for deleting your links?
- StavrosK 6y ago
  Hey dgivney! That looks quite good, thanks! Is there a trial so I can try it out for a few days? It looks like I need to pay to even try the UI. Also, the star domain is interesting, but you may want to have an alternative as well. I usually use the links so I can type them on other people's computers to get access to my Dropbox, and hunting for an emoji on a computer is rather inconvenient... I want to delete the links mostly for tidiness, but I also need to edit them because I sometimes want to change where they point to (to different folders in my Dropbox, etc).
  - dgivney 6y ago
    Interesting use case, I see. You can use the URL shortener on the homepage to create links but yes, the custom keywords, custom domains and link analytics require a small one-off payment for personal use. I did this thinking it will prevent spam but I understand it's probably important - I will create some trail accounts and send you one this weekend.

lixtra 6y ago

Your service did not work as advertised. I asked for https://ku.ag/ https://ku.ag/ to be shortened but it got prolonged to https://ku.ag/5q6w9v1hnp*o https://ku.ag/5q6w9v1hnp*o Also I noticed that you generate a new link each time. Why?

abiogenesis 6y ago
Possibly to allow enterprise use, with separate stats for each shortened link.
- rmedaer 6y ago
  You got the point.

emeraldd 6y ago

Somewhat related: What ever happened with the QR Code to url shortener patent lawsuits that were going on several years ago ... 2013ish I think? Is it still risking a lawsuit to use them? Context: https://www.paperspecs.com/caught-our-eye/beware-the-qr-code-patent-trap/ https://www.paperspecs.com/caught-our-eye/beware-the-qr-code...

emeraldd 6y ago
huh ... Seems like the patents might be expired? https://patents.google.com/patent/US8131597 https://patents.google.com/patent/US8131597 https://patents.google.com/patent/US6199048 https://patents.google.com/patent/US6199048

desireco42 6y ago

Love it. I like that code is small, google lens recognized it faster then usual and site opened fast. Kind of the code part ie. shortened url is weird and could use some humanization. But it is free, so it works for me.

rmedaer 6y ago

I would like to thank you for your feedback. If you still have a little bit of time, here is a quick survey to get more feedback about your needs! https://ku.ag/6dmohc20fvnd https://ku.ag/6dmohc20fvnd Kind regards,