links
Work
Lessn Provides Seriously Simple DIY Link Shortening
12:00AM Kevin Purdy | As so often happens, we just recently wrote up a guide to making your own URL shortener, only to find a new, super-simple alternative come along. For those with server space, Lessn is a clean, quick DIY link shortening solution. More »
Work
Freaking Huge URL Lengthens Too Short URLS
12:30AM Jason Fitzpatrick | We’ve talked a lot about making URLs shorter, from Hive Five topics to fancy Unicode tricks. What about the times you want to make your URL bigger? More »
Work
Tinyarro.ws: Because TinyURLS Just Aren’t Tiny Enough
11:30PM Jason Fitzpatrick | Someone must have heard your complaints about TinyURLs not being tiny enough. Through the magic of Unicode, Tinywarro.ws makes your URLs even more minuscule. How tiny? Tinyarro.ws turned Lifehacker AU’s URL into http://➡.ws/ᘬⓨ, TinyURL by comparison turned our URL into —12 characters longer. What is this URL shrinking witchcraft? Tinyarro.ws replaces the alpha-numeric string used by other URL shrinking services with a single Unicode character. Unicode was developed as a way of representing symbols from world writing systems in a consistent way across computing platforms. Thanks to systems not based on the Latin alphabet, there are around 100,000 unique characters and symbols. The downside of that is you may end up with a symbol that means “horny turtle”, or other cryptographs of various hilarities or embarassments. When you click on a URL created with the service, you are directed to a splash page that shows the real URL you’re being forwarded to, which is a nice touch for those committed to work-safe browsing. Tinyarro.ws is free to use, doesn’t require a sign-up. Tinnyarro.ws [via Download Squad] More »
Work
Snap Links Plus Brings Multi-Link Selection To Firefox 3
9:00PM Kevin Purdy | Windows/Mac/Linux (Firefox): Grab a whole cluster of links and open, bookmark, copy, or download them with Snap Links, a nifty extension recently updated for Firefox 3. There’s not a whole ton of complexity to Snap Links Plus, which was sans Plus when we first looked at it. After installing the add-on, you head to the options, choose which button—left, right, or middle—you want to activate it from, then use a familiar rectangle selection tool to select multiple links on a page. The basic option is to open each selected link in a new tab, but hold the control key when releasing your button and you’ll get a range of convenient options—the “Download All” choice, in particular. Snap Links Plus, updated recently by the official author after months of unofficial versions for Firefox 3, is a free download, works wherever Firefox does. Snap Links Plus [via gHacks] More »
Fix
Fix Broken Hyperlinks in Outlook
11:00PM Kevin Purdy | The Productivity Portfolio blog runs down three common fixes for the unexpected and highly frustrating bug of hyperlinks going non-helpful—meaning your browser doesn’t open, goes to a dead page, or some other problem. The post notes that resetting your browser, re-registering DLL files, and resetting file-type handlers in Windows usually fixes the problem without a re-install, and runs down the steps to do so. The fixes mostly involve working with Internet Explorer, but, as pointed out, you can then just switch your default browser back to Firefox (phew!). . Outlook Hyperlinks Fail to Work [Productivity Portfoilo] More »
Work
Email This! Sends Selected Text via Right-Click
10:06PM Kevin Purdy | Windows/Mac/Linux (Firefox): If you find yourself regularly selecting, copying, and then pasting text from your browser into emails, Email This! is a definite time saver. A right-click (or toolbar) menu lets you directly compose a new Gmail, Yahoo, or Google Apps web mail message with the selected text, or pass it into a mail client like Thunderbird or Outlook. Those options can be added to or whittled down, and helpful shortcuts (Alt+G for Gmail) makes text sending even quicker. Email This! is a free add-on, and works wherever Firefox does. Email This! [via gHacks] More »
Google Maps Adds Mapped Web Page Results View
12:00AM Kevin Purdy | Need pointers to further reading on a certain area you’ll be staying or working? Google Maps has added a “Mapped web pages” view to its advanced search options choices, displaying only pegs related to relevant web pages. Google Maps has always offered direct web links for businesses and places found in a search, but this view lets you see non-directly-related sites and a wider range of thoughts on certain places. Seems like a good vacation planning helper, or at least a nifty way to peek around your neighborhood’s web activity. More »
Shrink Multiple Links to One URL with LinkBunch
1:00AM Kevin Purdy | Link-shrinking services like TinyURL are great for sending long links, but sometimes you might want to share a list of sites with a contact over Twitter, IM, or even mobile phone text. LinkBunch, a free link consolidation service, enables just that kind of URL sharing. Head to LinkBunch, type or paste in your addresses one per line, and you’ll get a LinkBunch URL that points to a fast-loading page with all your links on it, as well as a meta-link that opens them all. Better still, Firefox users can install a LinkBunch extension that lets you automatically submit all your open tabs for a LinkBunch URL. The site is free to use and requires no sign-up. LinkBunch [via LH Australia] More »
LinkBunch: One link to send them all
10:46AM Sarah Stokely | Fans of short messaging formats like Twitter, or people looking for more tab/bookmark management tools for Firefox, will like LinkBunch – an extension which lets you consolidate a bunch of links into one URL.
Once you’ve downloaded and installed the extension (drag and drop it into an open Firefox window or tab to get the Add-on installation dialog) you just need to restart your browser and you’ll see that Linkbunch has become an option in Firefox’s Bookmarks menu.
To bunch your current open tabs, open the Bookmarks menu and click
‘Create a LinkBunch of tabs’. This will open a new tab displaying a page with the created LinkBunch. The page displays a list of all the links in the LinkBunch, and then there’s my favourite link down the bottom – “Open entire bunch”. As it says, if you hit that button it will open up each of the links in a new tab (after politely asking you if you *really* want to open them all).
I can definitely see LinkBunch having a place in my browser alongside TinyURL, and active Twitter users will also be interested to know that LinkBunch is also being integrated into Twitter. The feature isn’t active yet, but if you follow @linkbunch, you’ll be able to send it a direct message with all the links you want to consolidate, and the bot will reply back with your bunch link. Nice.
[via Web Worker Daily]
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