Shrink your URL-s like never before
November 24th
Daniel Pataki
Productivity
Shrink-O-Matic
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If you use Twitter or any other microblogging tool a lot, you know that character count is limited, while URL-s are very long. I’ve whipped up a new service called Shrink-O-Matic which lets you shrink your URL-s to a fraction of their size, but I also aimed to raise the bar a bit and create soemthing unique.
If you have a really long URL from ebay for example, you can input it into the shrinker and instead of this: “http://cgi.ebay.com/YAMAHA-DGX-520-PIANO-88-KEY-PIANO-DIGITAL-KEYBOAR-STAND_W0QQitemZ280287067006QQcmdZViewItemQQptZKeyboards_MIDI?hash=item280287067006&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1205|66%3A2|65%3A12|39%3A1|240%3A1308″ you would get a much nicer URL, something like this: “http://somurl.com/er45A”.
Apart from this basic feature, Shrink-O-Matic offers a lot more. You can register, and if you create links as a registered member you can keep track of all the ones you’ve created, plus see how many people have clicked on that link!
The most unique feature though is the “Specuial URL”. This enables blogs for example to track all the Shrink-O-Matic links which point to them. It also gives them a unique URL, for example, all URL-s pointing to Hack Your Day have the format: “http://somurl.com/hyd/1j3″. this is great, since if you use other services you loose the ability to identify a website by its URL. This doesn’t convey all the info lost, but I think it’s a fair compromise.
When you log in with your special account, you will see all the URL-s which point to your site, plus you can also track how many times these were clicked.
All in all, Shrink-O-Matic is just starting, so a load of new features will become available, a Shrink-O-Matic bookmarklet is already complete(drag the link to your bookmarks), a Firefox addon is in the work and so on. Shrink-O-Matic will also be able to shrink your pics and your code (css, html, php for starters), and more is on its way!
If you would be kind enough to spread the word I would be very thanful, I am trying to make this service the best on the net and I can use any help I can get! Happy URL shrinking!