Short URL addresses have changed the way we share links on the internet. Short URLs have their advantages and disadvantages. An advantage is having a link that is easier to share so that more people will remember the link and less of a chance of it being wrongly written. A Short URL can also be useful if you have a limited space to write, for example, in Twitter where the limit is 140 characters. Also, in an email, a short URL isn’t as error prone to having breaks in it than a longer URL.

However there are also disadvantages for short URLs, since you cannot see the end link of a short URL, you can be led to spam or shock sites. However their are solutions to this problem, having a preview link, so that the user knows the end link. Another problem is that if the URL service crashes then all the links registered with that service don’t work.

In this blog post I’ll be outlining my favourite and the most common short URL services and deciding which is the best.

TinyURL

Probably the most common truncator service around. TinyURL has common features such as an easily remembered domain, fairly short URLs, preview link, custom alias and a bookmarklet. TinyURL says it has around 154 million URLs in its database, this doesn’t allow them to have the shortest link (6 characters).

TinyURL is also prone to crashing, since it is the post popular service on the web it receives over 1.5 billion hits a month, this can lead it to get overloaded and crash, meaning your links don’t work.

There are also many features that TinyURL does not have, such as statistics on your URL, being able to register account to keep track of your links and choosing whether a URL is public or private but overall it does the job well.

is.gd

The main drawing card to is.gd is that it creates one of the shortest links. is.gd can create a URL that is only 7 characters (including punctuation). However like TinyURL is.gd lacks a few features, customisation, stats etc.

One feature of is.gd I really like is their bookmarklet for Firefox. This is a little button that sits in the Firefox toolbar, click it and it automatically shortens the link of the page that you are currently on and copies the new shortened link to the clipboard. So with one click you have your short URL ready to be pasted anywhere.

bit.ly

This shortener service boasts features that most sites don’t have. You can to sign up to an account so that you can track all your links, view information for each link, number of clicks etc. It also has common features such as a bookmarklet, easily remembered name and an option for a custom alias.

I really like this service as it combines features and simplicity equally so that the user can have the best experience.

Google Short Links

This is my favourite service and the one I use most often. What I love about Google Short Links is the ability to have your domain in the URL. For example instead of the short URL being tinyurl.com/1234 it is instead ant.geek.nz/1234. This is great for me because when someone sees the short URL they are curious and visit the parent URL (ant.geek.nz) which generates traffic for this blog! Great huh? Other than this Google Short Links has other great features such as statistics for each link, a bookmarklet and an option whether to make the link private or public.

This service is available with Google Labs for Google Apps.

Lenks

Developed and coded by Rowan, Lenks offers features that no other short URL services offer. For example, huge customisation options when you sign up and the ability to put your links in various folders, humour, informational etc. Lenks also gives you the ability to view other Lenk user links via their profile. With AJAX fast speed Lenks is definitely a short URL service to start using.

Of course Lenks has features common to all short URL services. Overall I highly recommend this service!

The Winner

My favourite short URL service is Google Short Links. I love this service as it is used by only me on my domain. It may not have as many features as other services but the features it does have majorly outweigh the features that are missing. Since this is a Google Labs project we can expect to see many more features to come.

Runnerups are Lenks and is.gd. What I love about Lenks is that it is feature rich. It has a lot of features that most truncate services don’t have. Lenks is still in beta so we can expect to see more great things. On the other side is is.gd, a very simple URL truncator, the stand out feature for me is the one click URL shortener feature, this makes it so easy to post a short link. I hope that other services take after is.gd in this regard.

So there we have it! Of course I only reviewed a sample of short URL services, there are many more avaliable for you to test out!

Have fun linking!

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I really do love Mozilla products, the flexibility and features of their products are something truely to be admired. Of course my favourite product is the browser Mozilla Firefox. See my post on Top 5 Reasons to Switch to Firefox. When I got my new notebook I decided to try Outlook 2007, this failed badly on Vista. I was searching for an alternative and due to my awesome experience with Firefox I decided to give its sister, Thunderbird – Mozilla’s email client a go.

I liked Thunderbird, it was great, reliable all the basic features I needed but there was one thing lacking. Yes, the supurb features of Gmail.

So the other day I decided to make the switch, it was the easiest switch I have ever experienced. On Thunderbird I was using IMAP with Google Apps so all my emails were there, beautifully intact.

Reasons I switched to Gmail (Google Apps).

Labels

This is an awesome feature that most people don’t know about. You can basically make “labels” to label your incoming messages on where they are from. For example every night this website is backed up and a copy is sent to me by email. I really don’t want to receive these emails everyday so I archive them straight away and a notification shows up on my label that my backup has been received.

Filters

Labels cannot work without this important feature. Filters lets you filter your message depending who it is from. For example all my Facebook, Twitter etc notifications are directed to their respective labels and do not even hit my inbox. As soon as I receive an email from Facebook it is automatically archived and sent to the Label, it never shows up in my inbox.

For anyone with overcrowded email problems, this is probably the best email management tool I have ever come across.

Amazing Search

This has got to be my favourite feature in switching to Gmail. The awesome functionality of Google search is applied to email. I can search by from, subject, body of the message or even label! Thunderbirds inbuilt search feature was really hard to deal with. Google search for Gmail is awesome for anyone who wants to find email fast.

Keyboard Shortcuts

This is a huge productivity booster. All I have to do is click a few keys and I am away composing, managing or sending email. For example all I have to do is press “c” an magically the compose window shows. There are heaps of shortcuts though, I am planning to learn them all slowly so soon enough I will have learnt them all.

Spam Filtering that Actually Learns from your Actions

Spam is a huge problem these days. With Gmail I get very few spam messages a month. I also get very few normal messages that go into the spam folder. However with the very few messages I tell Gmail to mark it as spam or to not and it actually learns. No spam filter system is fool proof and Gmail does a great job of combating spam.

These are my favourite web Gmail features. Of course there are other great ones such as Chat, Contacts and Labs however I think these universally apply to most people. There are also awesome Gmail features whether you use an email client or not, such as awesome security, spam filtering etc.

So what are your favourite Gmail features?

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