{"id":13429,"date":"2010-09-24T15:30:42","date_gmt":"2010-09-24T13:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/?p=13429"},"modified":"2010-09-24T15:30:42","modified_gmt":"2010-09-24T13:30:42","slug":"shorter-url-longer-url-funny-url","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2010\/09\/24\/shorter-url-longer-url-funny-url\/","title":{"rendered":"Shorter URL? Longer URL?  Funny URL?"},"content":{"rendered":"<!-- google_ad_section_start -->\n<p>This <a href=\"http:\/\/tech.slashdot.org\/story\/10\/09\/23\/1851220\/Is-the-Web-Heading-Toward-Redirect-Hell?from=rss\">Slashdot discussion<\/a> got me started. \u00a0The discussion is about URL shortening services and their impact on the Web. \u00a0Needless to say, most people who care about the Web, hate all kinds of third-party URL manipulations with a passion. \u00a0 The reasons are numerous, and here are two that annoy me the most:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> <strong>Obscurity<\/strong>. \u00a0You have no idea where you are going anymore. \u00a0It can be the newest scam website, an image, a huge video, or anything else for that matter. \u00a0When you see full URL, even if you don&#8217;t always can understand the full path, at least the domain name is a hint.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Latency<\/strong>. Most (all?) URL shortening services work via a redirect. \u00a0So whenever you click on the URL to visit a page, instead of going to the page directly you are going to the web service which expands that URL first, and then redirects you further. \u00a0This takes time and gives you nothing in return.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A lot of Slashdot people feel similar. \u00a0Yet it still makes for an interesting discussion. \u00a0Here are the bits that I picked up:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/hugeurl.com\/\">HugeUrl.com<\/a> &#8211; web service that does the opposite of what URL shortening services do. \u00a0It takes any URL and makes it huge. \u00a0Just for the fun of it.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.shadyurl.com\/\">ShadyUrl.com<\/a> &#8211; web service that obscures given URLs, making them look very suspicious. Also, for the fun of it.<\/li>\n<li>There are a number of browser plugins that automate the expansion of short URLs, either on-demand or as you go. \u00a0Here is <a title=\"Long URL Please\" href=\"https:\/\/addons.mozilla.org\/en-US\/firefox\/addon\/9549\/\">one for Firefox<\/a>. \u00a0Here is <a title=\"Chrome URL Expander\" href=\"https:\/\/chrome.google.com\/extensions\/detail\/limjcpdphjbhdldhiahblmfadfaciaok?hl=en\">one for Google Chrome<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Last year&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.codinghorror.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/url-shorteners-destroying-the-web-since-2002.html\">Coding Horror blog post<\/a> discussing the problems of URL shortening services.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Also after a brief discussion and fooling around with my colleagues, I learned about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com\/\">Abcd-Whatever<\/a>, which is a web service that lives on an extremely long domain name and offers free email addresses. \u00a0Such email addresses are hard for people to type correctly, impossible for some SPAM bots to grab, and excellent for testing web forms.<\/p>\n<!-- google_ad_section_end -->\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<!-- google_ad_section_start -->\n<p>This Slashdot discussion got me started. \u00a0The discussion is about URL shortening services and their impact on the Web. \u00a0Needless to say, most people who care about the Web, hate all kinds of third-party URL manipulations with a passion. \u00a0 The reasons are numerous, and here are two that annoy me the most: Obscurity. \u00a0You &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2010\/09\/24\/shorter-url-longer-url-funny-url\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Shorter URL? Longer URL?  Funny URL?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<!-- google_ad_section_end -->\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1,62,1334],"tags":[20,72,2418,19,1173],"keyring_services":[],"class_list":["post-13429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-technology","category-web-work","tag-browsers","tag-email","tag-humor","tag-tools","tag-web-architecture"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":16326,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2012\/06\/06\/the-new-bit-ly-a-delicious-deja-vu\/","url_meta":{"origin":13429,"position":0},"title":"The new Bit.ly &#8211; a Delicious d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"June 6, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Bit.ly is a famous and widely used URL shortening service. \u00a0Or at least it used to be until a few days ago, when a new Bit.ly was introduced. \u00a0I managed to miss the announcement, so it was only today that I saw it. \u00a0Being a fan of (almost) all new\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;All&quot;","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/new-bitly.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":21737,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2014\/05\/02\/burying-the-url\/","url_meta":{"origin":13429,"position":1},"title":"Burying the URL","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"May 2, 2014","format":"link","excerpt":"Burying the URL Today,\u00a0a Canary build of Google Chrome\u00a0removed something kind of important from the browser: the URL. [...] Facebook today announced\u00a0AppLinks, a documented standard for app-to-app linking that has the backing of other big names like Dropbox and Pinterest. While Google is taking the web out of the browser,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;All&quot;","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":22700,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2014\/10\/22\/url-rewriting-in-built-in-web-server-of-php\/","url_meta":{"origin":13429,"position":2},"title":"URL rewriting in built-in web server of PHP","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"October 22, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"PHP comes with a handy for development built-in web server. \u00a0However, most web projects have friendly URLs these days which are either Apache (mod_rewrite) or Nginx specific configuration. \u00a0This almost renders built-in PHP web server useless. \u00a0Unless you provide a PHP-based routing, like so: Start the PHP web server with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;All&quot;","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7946,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2004\/09\/23\/apache-url-rewriting-guide\/","url_meta":{"origin":13429,"position":3},"title":"Apache URL Rewriting Guide","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"September 23, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"\"A Users Guide to URL Rewriting with the Apache Webserver\" is a very comprehensive and easy written document that describes how to implement URL rewriting with Apache web server. It covers theory in general as well as few practical situations. Plenty of examples are there too.","rel":"","context":"In &quot;All&quot;","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":22373,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2014\/08\/12\/am-i-responsive-preview\/","url_meta":{"origin":13429,"position":4},"title":"Am I Responsive? Preview!","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"August 12, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Am I Responsive? - this is a brilliant tool! \u00a0You can type the URL you are interested in, click \"Go!\"\u00a0button and see the preview of the URL on four different screen sizes - large desktop, medium desktop, tablet, and smartphone. \u00a0No waiting in queue, no screenshots - all is live,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;All&quot;","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":26262,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2016\/07\/19\/the-history-of-the-url\/","url_meta":{"origin":13429,"position":5},"title":"The History of the URL","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"July 19, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"The History of the URL is a brilliant compilation of ideas and resources, explaining how we got to the URLs we use and love (or hate) today. \u00a0In fact, the article comes in two parts: Domain, protocol, and port Path, fragment, query, and auth Read them in whatever order you\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;All&quot;","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13429\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13429"},{"taxonomy":"keyring_services","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/keyring_services?post=13429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}