01/22/09
I’m sure you’ve seen shortened URLs posted in various places across the internet as it is insanely popular in social media such as twitter where posting a long link is a tweet suicide. Perhaps there has been a time where you weren’t sure about clicking a link because you had no idea where you would end up. Perhaps you work in a corporate environment where not knowing what site you’ll visit could cost you your job. It happens.
I happen to work in a corporation where I don’t want to land on oddball sites that are going to get me canned and since I work in interactive marketing, I am often staying in the loop with news, blogs, social media, etc. I often see links that I’m not sure about clicking and often don’t unless the person describes what it is and where it leads to. Here are just a few that popped up tonight:
- http://bit.ly/HDrh
- http://tinyurl.com/7umr6s
- http://bit.ly/13OS2
- http://is.gd/gMwH
Obviously, without some clues from the people who posted these links I’d have no idea where they go. I don’t know about you…but I like to know this stuff! I searched for a tool where I could slap a url like the ones above in a form and it would them show me the final url that I would end up at. To make a long story short, I couldn’t find one that did what I wanted. Most had way too many bells and whistles. All I wanted was to preview where a shortened url links to. That’s it.
So what did I do? I whipped one together. I call it “url snoop”. It’s simple to use and could possibly save your butt job one day. So check it out, bookmark it, and let me know what you think!
url snoop – preview shortened urls before you click through
Shane Eubanks
January 28th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Nice job. I tend to just risk it and go for it but I’m sure this would be handy if in an office (or public) environment
January 28th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
Thanks Lee. It was pointed out to me, also, that it helps when corporate firewalls block shortened url domains such as tinyurl.com. Just use http://urlsnoop.com to find out where it points and you can jump straight to it without risk being blocked through the short url. Pretty nifty.
BTW, you do awesome work. Recently came across your stuff after your guest post on Problogdesign for “10 Things to do After Installing WordPress“. I suggest everyone using WordPress read through that…definitely good tips!
February 21st, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Shane,
Thx for URLSnoop. It is worth spreading the word about.
Wilma