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Subject:Shortened links (was RE The Friday funny) From:"Carol Lee" <clee -at- austin -dot- rr -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Mon, 10 Nov 2003 09:33:23 -0600
Long URLs are ugly, and they can get broken in email clients. In regard
to publishing though, one thing to remember is that if you are using a
service to provide a shortened URL, that shortened URL will be broken if
the service goes away. Not a big deal for a shortened URL that is used
to share a Friday smile, but something to consider before using them for
commercial or archival purposes.
Fred Langa, a computer/web author, experimented with using TinyURL for
link references in his worthy newsletter, and decided to provide
shortened URLs using his own servers for the redirection to avoid this
dependency. He discusses it in this article
(http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2003/2003-06-26.htm#4), which also
provides some interesting numbers about the bandwidth that URLs consume.
Hmmm, let's see, how much bandwidth did that URL just cost the techwr-l
site! ;-)
Could tech writers deploy redirection technology within individual works
to make long URLs more readable while maintaining control over the full
URL reference (i.e., without having a dedicated server behind it)?
That's something I'd like to investigate further.
Cheers,
Carol
*-----Original Message-----
*From: bounce-techwr-l-133538 -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
*[mailto:bounce-techwr-l-133538 -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com] On Behalf Of
*Kat Nagel
*Sent: Saturday, November 08, 2003 6:34 PM
*To: TECHWR-L
*Subject: RE: RE The Friday funny
*
*
*
*At 06:27 PM -0500 2003-11-08, Jeff Hanvey wrote:
*>There's also http://www.makeashorterlink.com
*
*And SnipURL:
*http://www.snurl.com/
*--
* K@ Kat Nagel
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