5 ms·
Tell HN: Solution to URL Shortners
tr.im went down, a great example. Lot of people get really defensive on this subject, but seriously other than twitter, there is rarely a need for shortners. You are depending the links validity completely on a 3rd party website which doesn't have a great business model to survive, not very smart. Bitching about it aside, a Solution:
URL Lengthener/Unrollers/Expanders.
I call upon web developers and the HN community to take action from the application/server side. There are already scripts available that converts the popular shortners to their original form. (which convert tr.im/12345 -> realURL). Run this through you're DBs or inputs and clean out the mess.
- http://dentedreality.com.au/projects/slinky/
- http://www.longurlplease.com/
- Google got more
- noodle 17y agoyeah, i'll take issue with the assertion that there's rarely a need for shorteners. for many, its not about the shortening, its about the statistics gleaned from the service. but yes, nice idea. i think there are a few other similar services out there, though.
- mbrubeck 17y agoSee also http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=753154 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=753154 (from just two hours earlier).
- astrodust 17y agoMaybe there's some way to publish an archive of all shortened URLs for posterity, even .torrent. It's the least a service can do before turning the lights out.
- yannis 17y agoTim was right in 1998! But who reads 1998 articles? Cool URIs don't change http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI. Tim told us so!