<div><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 6:27 AM, Todd Walton <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:tdwalton@gmail.com">tdwalton@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
And another reason I hate this tinyurl thing... I know someone on a<br>
list I'm on referenced a certain site. Can I search my email for<br>
links to that site? Nooooo*. They used a freakin' tinyurl or bitly<br>
or whatever.<br></blockquote><div> </div></div>They serve a purpose. Regarding your complaint, URLs without context are evil, really. It doesn't matter if the link is to a shortening service or to some random website. It is my humble opinion that URLs themselves should give an indication of the content, and if they can't (or even if they do) should include a summary to accompany them. I would classify the failure to do this along the same lines as someone who top-posts. </div>
<div><br></div><div>(this was meant with a tiny bit of humour because I was top-posting when I composed that paragraph)</div><div><br></div><div>Regarding choosing a service for url shortening, I use services that provide preview links for people who care about such things. So I generally use <a href="http://bit.ly">bit.ly</a> or <a href="http://is.gd">is.gd</a>, both of which give you a preview if you append a + to the end of the URL. With tinyurl you can pre-pend the subdomain "preview" and get the same.</div>
<div><br>-- <br>Matthew Nuzum<br>newz2000 on freenode, skype, linkedin, <a href="http://identi.ca">identi.ca</a> and twitter<br><br>"Never stop learning" –Robert Nuzum (My dad)<br>
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