One-Day Project: ctxt.us - url shortener with context

by TravisLS • 17 years ago

20 10 17 years ago

TravisLS2• 17 years ago

I know, just what the world needs, another URL shortener. Still, I was tired of being confronted with links on twitter like: "Coolest thing ever - http://short.url/12345. So in order to add a little context to my links, I created my own shortener. Give it a shot and let me know what you think.

mariorz• 17 years ago

Why the need to include the time it took you to build? I've seen it done more than a few times and I've always found it annoying. No one cares, TBH. Let people appreciate your work for what it is. Kudos on the project though.

gphakos• 17 years ago

I like the idea a lot. I'm always suspicious of shortened urls, but I feel that those who share my caution may also share my appreciation of the NoScript plug-in. New users may be more inclined to use your service with a regular form submit opposed to one that only works with javascript. Coming from HN I was willing to whitelist your site but others may not be.

benhoyt2• 17 years ago

Guess you didn't know about my http://DecentURL.com -- which does more or less the same thing. Though that was inspired by a comment on reddit, not so much by a real need. :-)

DecentURL gives even more context -- it inserts the domain like yours, but also grabs the page <title> and uses a short form of that as the link part (or you can type in your own, shorter one).

vaporstun• 17 years ago

While both show some context, DecentURL is not a shortener. For example, I took the URL of this comments thread and stuck in in both yours and ctxt.us:

Original - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=731637

DecentURL.com - http://news.ycombinator.decenturl.com/hacker-news-one-day-pr...

ctxt.us - http://ctxt.us/news.ycom/A

In fact, yours lengthened the URL quite a bit. Not that DecentURL is not without its application, but your claim that it is the same as ctxt.us is not really valid. I quite enjoy the fact that this is a way to have your cake (a short url) and eat it too. (actually know what the hell you're clicking on)

Props to ctxt.us.

shortformblog• 17 years ago

Great idea. Just tried it. You should consider adding metrics to it down the line, but I bet you that you might find an audience for it.

Gonna throw it on my blog to give it some cool Twitter points. :D

TravisLS2• 17 years ago

Glad you liked it. Thanks for the shout-out on your blog / twitter.

Xichekolas• 17 years ago

One-Day Project: ctxt.us - url shortener with context

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