Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

I didn’t really pay much attention to shortening url addresses until Miguel Guhlin pointed out to me that it really helps others when you are emailing links or putting them in articles (By the way, if you haven’t see his blog, it’s definitely worth a read). So this leads me to this “The Best…” list.

It’s a pretty short one (no pun intended).

Here are my picks (with a big thanks to Miguel) for The Best Ways To Shorten URL Addresses:

Tiny URL is known to many and is pretty darn easy. All you do is input the lengthy address and out comes a short one that is supposed to be valid forever.

URL Kiss is a new site that seems, at least to me, just about the same as Tiny Url. But maybe I’m missing something. If I am, please let me know.

Miguel says that Snip URL is his favorite “since it allows you to ‘rename’ the URL. Instead of a hard to remember character string (1t3r), you can have people go to http://snipurl.com/whatever where “whatever” is what you type in.” People liking this feature must not have escaped the notice of Tiny URL since they also just added the same feature this month. Moourl also has this feature.

Another very recent addition to this group is bit.ly, which the Read Write Web blog called the “tiny url of the future.” You can read its post to learn about all of bit.ly’s capabilities.

PrevURL lets you preview what site you’ll be seeing if you use a shortened url address. Being able to see it beforehand is a big help in avoiding potential computer viruses.

Page Tweet is a unique url shortener. I’m just going to quote from a great blog called Demo Girl (you should visit her blog because she has a screencast showing how to use Page Tweet) to describe it:

[It]allows you to shrink a URL for sharing on Twitter and other social networking sites, but also allows you to add your own 140 character message to the actual link that you’re sharing. Your message doesn’t appear in your Twitter updates with the link, it appears on the actual site – allowing the people who click on the link to see why you brought them there in the first place.

I could see using it even when you’re not shortening it for a network like Twitter.

Some readers have left some useful ideas and suggestions in the comments section since this list was first posted.  They are definitely worth reading.

When I originally wrote this list, the thought didn’t occur to me that someone could create a link-shortening tool that would be ideal for English Language Learners.   I was primarily looking at tools that worked well for anybody.

I was wrong.

The creators of MinMu have indeed developed a service that is great for ELL’s, and it also can have other uses.

All you do is paste the url addresses of as many webpages as you want into a box (no registration is required), and you are given one url address for all of them. Click on it, and you’re shown a screen that not only shows the links to all of the sites, but also thumbnail images of them. Students will find this kind of visual support very helpful.

Viewista is similar to Minmu.  One neat feature of Viewista is that it allows various options on how to view the multiple sites, including vertically and through a slideshow mode. ShareTabs is also similar.

Burn Url is a new link-shortening tool that I’m adding to this list.  Instead of describing some of its unique features here, though, I’m just going to recommend you go to the Read Write Web blog post which explains it fully.

Gl.am lets you easily and quickly create groups of links which can then be identified by one shortened url address. You can also write a description about each link. Most importantly, it shows a screenshot of the link, which means photos can be shown, too.

Fur.ly is a new tool that lets you combine multiple links into one.  It’s a little different from others I’ve posted about — they show you visual snapshots of each site that you can then click on one at a time. Fur.ly, on the other hand, shows you the first link in the collection and you can then click on arrows to go review each one.

Su.pr is a new tool to shorten url addresses that is being developed by Stumbleupon.  Instead of writing a long post explaining it here, you can go to the Make Use Of blog and read their good description.

If you found this list helpful, you might want to see the other ninety ones, too.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS