Rate My App: Build Time = 342 Minutes

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=580764

by nick007 • 17 years ago

17 42 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

It was a weekend project. How's it feel, what's it missing?

http://qzip.in

dxjones• 17 years ago

How about every second year CS student write a URL shortening service on the web. Then we should have lots of them.

Then, how about every third year CS student write a paper discussing why URL shortening services are a bad thing.

Maybe fourth year CS students could write a program to spider the web looking for broken web links that depended on the (now-defunct) URL shortening services they set up in second year.

Ok, ... sorry to be so snarky.

342 minutes. Nice job.

You "shortened" the time to build a URL shortening service.

tialys• 17 years ago

A friend of mine in college just wrote his own: ze.nu

I was pondering writing one for fun... but now I feel bad.

greendestiny• 17 years ago

If you think you'll learn something from it, go ahead and do it.

lpgauth• 17 years ago

Ugh, I really don't feel like writing a spider...

Aron• 17 years ago

but if you swallowed a spider then perhaps you'd die.

tlrobinson• 17 years ago

I'd say URL shorteners belong in the realm of the "information technology program" department, as my school called it, not CS... but otherwise I agree with you.

tamersalama2• 17 years ago

You're lucky. My company used to name it "CPU" department.

enneff• 17 years ago

Just what we needed. Another URL shortener.

What's the point?

ashleyw• 17 years ago

Why is it a bad thing? It's better to have tons of shortening services, than a few big ones. Just to spread the risk incase one goes down.

If tinyurl.com or bit.ly went down right now, half of the links on Twitter would go dead...

thomaspaine• 17 years ago

If I'm using a url shortener and worried about my links dying, I'm pretty sure that I trust tinyurl or bit.ly to be around longer than 99% of the url shorteners that have popped up in the last two weeks.

nick0073• 17 years ago

hey, this one makes it easier to see how many clicks your links is getting. does that count for anything?

rrhyne• 17 years ago

Counts that you finished and launched a project. Keep using it, post it anywhere you need to and maybe you get enough users to sell it.

Or, go ahead and try to sell it over and over again to anyone who wants to start a URL service.

djahng• 17 years ago

Nice job getting it done so quickly. You have any plans/ideas on how to make money with it?

vyrotek• 17 years ago

While there are a lot of these services out there already, I think it looks and works great. Especially for doing it in 342 minutes.

ramchip• 17 years ago

Perhaps it could check if a link has already been added. Also return any qzip URL as itself.

These don't matter a whole lot for a weekend project though.

nick0073• 17 years ago

nice idea... might add that

Vipsy• 17 years ago

I would like it to, 1.copy the short-url to clipboard directly. 2.provide a firefox addon to make short urls directly without visitng website.

Zarathu2• 17 years ago

If you're asking for an opinion from the entrepreneur in me, I'd tell you to go get a job at Starbucks and stay as far away from the Web as possible.

If you're asking for an opinion from the programmer in me, I'd give you a pat on the back and buy you lunch.

breck2• 17 years ago

Really? I've made a lot more from URL shorteners than someone makes at Starbucks.

palish• 17 years ago

People have paid you to create a URL shortener?

bemmu• 17 years ago

I tried to figure out how linkrap.com makes money. At least it doesn't seem to replace Amazon links with affiliate ones, so will you reveal the trick?

sammcd2• 17 years ago

From your resume it seems the entrepreneur in you has little experience.

I think a true entrepreneur would be impressed with getting a project finished quickly.

Zarathu2• 17 years ago

Appearances are deceiving.

patio11• 17 years ago

Well, your call on how to spend your time, but if you were willing to bump that up to about 2342 minutes you could have written something people would actually pay for, and you'd get a bit of experience on the non-programming parts of running a business in the bargain.

As to what's it is missing: I'm guessing the anti-spam measures in place are kind of lacking, but I'm not going to exploit it to test.

sammcd2• 17 years ago

Man whoa, where is all this hate coming from? Good job, under 6 hours isn't bad at all. I think it looks great to have launched projects up on the web as part of a resume.

If I had a suggestion it would be to automatically show me the "tracking" stats.

sfphotoarts• 17 years ago

why'd it take you so long? :)

Seriously though, good job, nice clean design, fast performing and seems to work (always important). As for usefulness in a world full of url shortening services I'm more skeptical about, but as a fun/school project its a good job.

jpcx01• 17 years ago

Nice job. Simple and functional. Just as good as any of the other shortening services.

Couple points. Bad domain name (IMO) and I'm not entirely sure it'll stay around. Do you plan on keeping it hosted? Someone would need to know you plan on staying online and operational if they were going to post something using it.

Want to post the source?

gaoshan2• 17 years ago

I tried to "shorten" http://qzip.in/ and got http://qzip.in/h4. ;)

cnu• 17 years ago

I think he has fixed it now. I tried it and it did nothing.

gaoshan2• 17 years ago

Oh they joy of edge cases... try http://www.com (that is a valid url by the way... points to some crappy parked page so don't bother visiting it).

blainator• 17 years ago

At first I was not amused by another URL shortener.

Now I respect you for having the guts to post it here. Props to you.

The only thing that you should add is an optional email address input. Now you can contact the people that are using your app. For instance, if you wanted to email everyone after you rolled out a new feature. Like a new feature that enables your app to email the link you just created to yourself. Maybe is sends another email after 10,25,50,100 visits to let you know.

jimbob72• 17 years ago

is a url shortening service the newest "hello wrold i cna rite programm"? sure feels like it.

vorador2• 17 years ago

By the way, what framework/language did you use to develop it ?

danbmil99• 17 years ago

heh, I thought you meant compile time.

chanux• 17 years ago

Pretty good. The favicon is xampp icon.

GVRV• 17 years ago

Great work considering the time. (just judging the website, not whether the need exists for another URL shortner cause the title says "Rate my App", not "Give me your opinion on URL Shortners"). Anyways, can you tell me where you got your .in domain from, I'm looking for a good registrar? Thanks.

nick0073• 17 years ago

godaddy has them available now ($6)

mstefff• 17 years ago

342 should have been 60

subhabose• 17 years ago

It was a refreshing sight after going through so many URL shortening websites to find www.aafter.com. The website is the first of its kind in the entire web shortening websites to generate two smaller URLs as you type one lengthy URL in the search box. Either of the smaller URLs could be used to access the website instead of writing the lengthy URL and are quite easy to remember.

Tony Smith

Rate My App: Build Time = 342 Minutes

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