Bigger is NOT Better - Tiny is Tops!
 Oct 28th, 2003
Advantages:
Its perfect
Disadvantages:
Absolutely None
Recommendable:
Yes
Detailed rating:
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  TheChocolateLady
About me:
שלום! Sorry, but I no longer have time to read or write for this site. I wo...
Member since:21.06.2000
Reviews:218
Members who trust:243
Review rated by 49 Ciao members on average: very helpful 
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Read Comment
You’re reading this on the Internet, so you must be connected. It therefore seems likely that you’ve experienced the following scenario: You’ve been clicking all over the Internet to find some information. Sending out e-mails to friends and strangers alike in hopes that you’ll get a reply. Then, finally one day, someone sends you an e-mail message with a link to some site that sounds like it’s exactly what you’ve been looking for. You move your cursor to the link and click. The browser opens up and lo and behold you see before you …
The page cannot be displayed And all because the URL you were sent, and clicked on was wrapped over more than one line. So now you have to go back to your e-mail message, find the bit that’s missing from the URL, copy that and paste it into the address line of your browser.
Or worse yet, how about when you send a particularly long URL address to a friend? How many times have those friends written back to you that they couldn’t open the page, even though you copied it directly from the site without changing anything? Lots, I’m sure, and to resolve it, you end up writing a long description
of what site it is, where to click and what to do to get to that page. Even then, your friend might never find what you were trying to show him. And here on Ciao! where the URLs in ops aren't clickable, well, those long strings of letters and numbers just slide all across the page and no one can copy and paste them into their browsers, now can they. Frustrating, isn't it?
Well actually it’s a bloody waste of time if you ask me, and annoying, as well! But you live with it, day in and day out because you think you have no choice. But you haven’t learned about TinyURL.com. Well, ignorance isn’t bliss and now is the time for me to educate you. This has got to be the easiest thing there is to use. First of all, the site - just type in “tinyurl.com” in your browser’s address line and hit enter. You’ll find a simple blue & white page that touts things like “Making long URLs postable”. The whole idea is to take that long URL and make it into something short so you can send it to whomever you like. This site will do just that. Moreover, the new URL that they give you will never expire (even if the page you made it from does) and it will never get broken into pieces so that it’s unclickable.
The site will show you two ways to do this. The first is the most obvious. You copy the long URL from the address box of the page you want to send to someone, and then you come to this site, paste that into the box you’ll find right in the middle of the screen, and then click on the “Make TinyURL” button. For instance, this long URL which will take you to the Amazon.co.uk site for the DVD of the movie Pirates of the Caribbean:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00008KDHH/qid=1067345640/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_2_1/202-0586684-8779022
becomes: http://tinyurl.com/soaz Isn’t that cute? Furthermore, if you’re using version 4 or higher of Internet Explorer, that little URL will automatically be pasted into your clipboard so you don’t have to highlight and copy this address yourself, you can just go straight to the message or post that you want it in and paste it in.
But you know what, if it’s a tad bit inconvenient for you to copy a long URL and then go to this web page and then paste it into the box and then hit the button, this site allows you to be even lazier than this. They have a Toolbar Button option, right there on the page. Just scroll down a bit on their page to the place that says “Add TinyURL to your browser’s toolbar” and then do as you’re told. That is, drag the link up to your toolbar and Bob’s Your Uncle! The next time you want to copy a huge URL just click on the TinyURL button on your toolbar and the next thing you know, the address of the site you were at is quickly shrunken down to miniscule proportions (and, if you’re browser is the right kind, the new URL is already in your clipboard). What’s more, if you are into HTML and make lots of web pages with lots of long links, you can use this tool to shorten them for your code pages. If you do, you might want to put a link to TinyURL into your own web pages out of courtesy. And this site even makes that easy for you, by giving you the code to do just that. Aren’t they sweet? Hell, they’re absolutely adorable, the little darlings!
This is probably one of the most useful Internet tools I’ve ever seen. And I bet you’d be willing pay a few pounds a year for that service, wouldn’t you? And I bet you’re wondering how much this is going to cost you? Well, here’s the really wonderful part - its TOTALLY FREE! Yes, finally someone has come up with something unbelievably useful that is practically essential and they’re not going to charge you even a penny for it. Pretty incredible, isn’t it? But be not of despair, good friends - if you really like this tool, and are feeling generous, they do let you donate money to them, the sweethearts! Bottom Line: there is absolutely nothing that anyone can say against this service - it’s totally perfect and deserves 10 stars, not just 5. So what are you waiting for? Go to http://tinyurl.com NOW and you’ll never have a broken URL again.
Thanks for reading.
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Sorry, there is no technical stuff this time - the only thing you need to know is their web page address which is http://tinyurl.com Oh, and some of the stuff below isn't really appropriate for this site, but I'm giving it top ratings anyway.
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by (2%):
21.05.2005 10:47
Wow thanks for that, have added this to my favourites I can see this being very usefil in the future. Jane x
15.02.2004 13:47
Useful bit of info there, thanks. Pat.t
10.11.2003 06:02
Just in case the site TinyURL site closes I like to give both the unaltered URL and the short one. Did you know that there are quite a few sites that offer the same service? Here's a list of them with some guidance as to what is on offer from each http://notlong.com/links/. These services help when using Yahoo groups as Yahoo tend to munch long links in postings but even there I still play safe and give the full link too.