I guess anyone could use this, not just Twitter Folk. You every have to hand write a web address (URL) down on paper and shook your head in frustration at the ridiculous length of the address? I have. Undoubtedly I'd miss a character somewhere and the link was useless.
But I joined the forum up to Twitter to keep members who follow Tweets up to date on events, posts of the day, interesting videos, archived posts and video/audio shows and more - but soon found that Twitter (which has a 140 character limit) can be as tough as making Haiku's, just to express a thought, forget about a long long link.
Trying to keep a single post under 140 character isn't that easy - especially if you are long winded like me. So I noticed they recommended 2 services that turn long-winded links into short manageable links - the one I really like and now use is
www.tinyurl.com.
so purposely I was playing at Walmart's site just to see the longest link I could find and it was 232 characters long - imagine that nightmare
but read on to see a real test of Tinyurl's power.
You just highlight that enormous link and paste it in the box at Tinyurl and below it pops out a 26 character link that takes you to the exact place. Mind you 18 of the Tinyurl's address id
http://www.tinyurl, so only SEVEN characters represent the page you are going to - no commercials, no fees - it is amazing and allows you to add much more thought in your posts at twitter and LITERALLY most people can remember as 7 digit code, at least write it in your hand!
so let's try it here is a link from bestbuy.com, for a selection of computers - the link is 428 characters long: four hundred twenty eight - wow: try writing THAT on you hand!!!
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olstemplatemapper.jsp?id=pcat17080&type=page&qp=crootcategoryid%23%23-1%23%23-1~~q70726f63657373696e6774696d653a3e313930302d30312d3031~~cabcat0500000%23%230%23%2311a~~cabcat0501000%23%230%23%2329~~f994||4576657279646179~~cpcmcat212600050011%23%230%23%23f~~nf396||46696e616e63696e67204f6666657273&list=y&nrp=15&sc=abComputerSP&ks=960&usc=abcat0500000&sp=&list=y&iht=n&st=processingtime%3A%3E1900-01-01
NOTE: you will have to highlight the entire link above and copy it to your browser. Careful to choose the entire long link.Now I copied it then paste it into Tinyurl and hit the "MAKE TINYURL" button - the following 26 character link pops out in a blink of a second - going to the exact same page flawlessly!
http://tinyurl.com/27qg2mz is the link Tinyurl gave. SAME EXACT PAGE but
YOU SAVE 402 characters in the web address - amazing.Try both links yourself. It is an amazing use of alpha-numeric combination and even if you broke it up into THREE pieces, you STILL couldn't send the original address on Twitter, but the tinyurl version allows you room to describe the page in detail.
I have always been impressed with gadgetry sites and THIS is one of the most clever I have seen in a long time. I see this applications when sending family to recipe sites, Christmas shopping lists via email, on and on. I'm sold on
www.tinyurl.com - Just 26 characters instead of 428 - no matter what the application, I can appreciate the wonders of Tinyurl.
Just think, remembering the
www.tinyurl.com part is easy, put that away in long term memory and if you can remember just the 7 characters at the end, you can go to any web-page in the world, no matter how far it is hidden in the belly of the beast.
BEEMASTER RATING
5 STARS