Better short URLs with BURL [Better short URLs with BURL]

fergbrain — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 19:22:22 GMT

A couple days ago, lifehacker had an article on TinyURL etiquette. Mostly as a proof-of-concept (but now something more), I created BURL: a Better Universal Resorce Locator.

The issue with TinyURL and just about any other site similar to it is that all context is lost. If I post a link to http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=fad44098-8b73-4e06-96d4-d1eb70eacb44&displaylang=en, you can take one glance at it and know that it has something to do with Microsoft. However, if I post a link to http://tinyurl.com/4gdju, you have nothing. There is zero context to what is being linked to and you have to trust the sender of the link to provide that context. What I tried to do is maintain some of the context of the original link. A BURL link looks like this: http://burl.fergcorp.com/microsoft/6e1c1. Yes, it is longer but you now have context. And the best part is, all you still have to do is enter just the URL in. BURL automatically takes the domain name and makes that the context word.

This is just a proof-of-concept. I wrote the code in just a few hours and while I’ve done quite a bit of testing, I’ve not done enough to consider it final, so I would appreciate any feedback Channel Niners have.

BURL: a Better Universal Resorce Locator

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Better short URLs with BURL [Better short URLs with BURL]