New York SBDC Research Network

Back in August 2007, I suggested using TinyURL as a means of shorten a URL, particularly when e-mailing a long URL that might hit a line break. Unfortunately, some folks apparently enjoy hiding embarrassing and inappropriate web content, such as spam and porn, behind a TinyURL and similar services. Some users won't open them because of bad experiences. Here are two suggestions: 1) Avoid blind TinyURL clickthroughs by utilizing TinyURL's preview page and enable previews. 2) Use a service such as unshorten.com to get the original URL. This usually works not only with TinyURL.com, but also SnipURL.com , NotLong.com , Metamark.net , and zURL.ws .

Ofttimes, I see someone send a URL via e-mail and it spreads onto the second line of the posting. The first line of the address is hyperlinked, but the second is not. This becomes cumbersome for the end user. Two suggestions: See if the address can be manually shortened. I've noticed that in some newspaper and magazine databases, an address is created to indicate not only the story, but the section and the date. If removing that information still gets you to the story, shorten it. An example: http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=613944&category=FRONTPG&BCCode=HOME&newsdate=8/14/2007 can be shortened to http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=613944 , and is actually more likely to work over time, for some arcane reasons. The other method is a website TinyURL!™ . Put in even that shortened, 57-character, version of the URL above and you'll end up with http://tinyurl.com/yrwmgk , a more manageable 25-character URL.