I remembered once I called Hewlett Packard for support regarding an intermittent problem with USB keyboard and mouse. The support guy asked me to download the latest chipset driver and that should solve the problem. Usually the URL to download a driver is very long and hard to remember that makes it harder to spell it out to customers. What they did was they used FREE short URL redirection service such as the popular TinyURL. I really thought that this is a good idea if you need to spell out a URL to another person…

Here are the advantages of using URL shortening service:

1. Easy to remember. You put a long URL in, you get a shortened version back.
TinyURL URL shortening service
2. Possible to read over the phone (same example as above)
3. Hiding actual URL
- You have a choice to hide the forwarded URL and showing only the tinyurl.com address.
4. URLs that won’t break into more than one line, making it compatible on email and forum postings

I found a few URL shortening service and listed below if you don’t want to use TinyURL.
1. TinyURL – An example of TinyURL format: http://tinyurl.com/2zfz4v
2. urlTea – An example of urlTea format: http://urltea.com/1e4
3. notlong – An example of notlong format: http://raymondcc.notlong.com
4. 2URL – An example of 2URL format: http://2url.org?31008
5. SnipURL – An example of SnipURL format: http://snipurl.com/1ds36
6. ShortURL – An example of ShortURL format: http://raymondcc.shorturl.com

I don’t really like the sixth one (ShortURL) because it has basic and premium account. For the free basic account, you need to register and it takes 3 days for a URL to be approved to prevent abuse. Worst part is it has a small link bar at the bottom of your site like the image below.
ShortURL link bar

In my opinion, it’s much easier to remember if you use subdomain names such as NotLong or ShortURL. The rest just provides random characters at the end and unless you memorize it, you’re not going to remember them. Between NotLong and ShortURL, I’d go for the FREE NotLong URL shortening through forwarding service because it’s totally FREE!


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