Tip of the Week
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Taming Long URL’s
How many times has this happened to you? You want to send someone a cool web address
you just found, so you copy the link and email it to them, only to find that the
link doesn’t work for them because the email split it into two pieces. Driving directions are a good example. If I copy the Yahoo directions for driving
from Pittsburgh to Palatine that originally looks like this:
…Outlook decides to break the link like this instead:
http://maps.yahoo.com/dd_result?ed=64LuWeV.winumBs4YQK1ux0TOv3qQPVJay6MYOdBJ7pX24DiWZcldSgxzic-
&csz=Pittsburgh%2C+PA+15205&country=us&tcsz=Palatine%2C+IL+60067&tcountry=us
You can get around this quite easily by using a site called TinyURL.com.
In the above example, I can convert the directions into a very short
address in one simple step using tinyurl.com:
Pretty cool.
One side effect in doing this is that the conversion makes the
actual address invisible to the recipient, so they have no idea where they are
being directed to until after they click it.
Depending on how you look at it, this can either be an advantage or a
disadvantage. It certainly opens the
window for a few pranks.