urls

ShadyURL makes URLs entertainingly suspicious

Link shortening has become a commonplace on services like Facebook and Twitter. Heck, even Google shortens URLs within its products now. People seem to be getting more used to the idea that shortened URLs, despite not showing you where they lead, are safe. Part of that, is that the companies that are doing the shortening keep blacklists of sites with malware or spyware, to keep people from accidentally visiting sites that will do harm.

Newcomer ShadyURL makes no such claims though. This wonderfully satirical service turns even legitimate URLs into something that even the least tech-savvy friend or family member … Read more

View your Mozilla cache

MozillaCacheView provides a simple set of tools for exploring your Firefox browsing history. While its layout is disappointingly bland, nearly identical to its sibling ChromeCacheView, its results are unimpeachable.

The interface will instantly bore you. It's a simple row of nearly indecipherable icons, saved only by the fact that they all have mouse-over tooltips so you can figure what they do. A little bit of exploring will help you grok what each one does. In order: you can select the cache folder, open the cached item's link in your browser, copy selected cached files to a new folder, … Read more

PDFmyURL turns any site into a PDF

PDF enthusiasts have a new Web converter tool at their disposal with PDFmyURL, a simple, one-function site that converts any live Web site into a static PDF file--something handy for offline reading, long-term archiving, and sticking on PDF-friendly e-book readers like Amazon's Kindle. It can also be a lifesaver, if you're on a computer without PDF-making software that would otherwise enable you to "print" a PDF copy of your own.

In every way, PDFmyURL, which launched on Tuesday, is the exact opposite of one of our favorite PDF sites, PDFMeNot (currently down), which takes hosted PDF … Read more

Tip: Make Googl URLs without Google's toolbar

Have you been lusting over Google's free URL-shortening service but unwilling to install Google's browser toolbar to use it from non-Google sites?

You're not alone, and the good news is that there are now a handful of alternatives, my favorite being Googl Lite, a free Firefox add-on that shortens the URL of any page you're on through Googl, then copies that link into your system's clipboard.

The button, just a little more than 20 pixels wide, can be placed anywhere within your browser. And if you're not fond of downloads, you can use a software-free bookmarklet … Read more

Move your URLs to your mouse

URL Tooltip is a simple add-on that performs a simple function. It shows a pop-up tool tip with the URL of whatever Web site link you're hovering over. You can set the font size, and toggle wrapping long URLs. That's it.

But by putting the power of URL preview into your mouse, you can then hide your Status Bar. Assuming you don't use it for anything else, this can save valuable screen real estate--especially in Netbooks.

URL Tooltip is a one-shot wonder, but that doesn't mean it's not a handy tool to have.

Google gets into the URL-shrinking biz with Googl

Google ventured into new territory on Monday with the launch of a new URL-shortening service it's calling Googl.

Unlike some existing and high-profile shorteners such as TinyURL and Bitly, Googl is not a general-purpose link shrinker that users can access by going to a standalone site. Instead, it's been built into Google products, beginning with Google's browser toolbar and its FeedBurner RSS service. Both of those services can now create shortened Googl URLs that link to the source content while using fewer characters. This is especially important for sharing on places like Twitter, where there are size … Read more

Disappointing downloader

Vidferret's 123 YouTube Downloader offers a lot of tools to make downloading videos simple. However, this program was laden with issues that made it too difficult to use.

The program's interface is characterized by a professional-looking design. It's easy to operate, with a few relatively straightforward commands. However, one thing we didn't like was its complete lack of a Help file. Even when the program directed us to the company's Web site, we found nothing more than a commercial for the developer's other products. The program did allow us to cut and paste a … Read more

AVG LinkScanner can detect malicious short URLs

URL shorteners may be handy for your tweets on Twitter. But they're also known security holes since they don't display the actual address of your destination. A free tool from security vendor AVG may provide a solution.

AVG has updated its free LinkScanner tool to detect malicious pages hiding behind shortened URLs. The company said the tool checks the actual destination of each URL link to make sure the page is legitimate.

More than a dozen URL-shortening services abound on the Net, including TinyURL and Bitly. With its 140-character limit, Twitter automatically shortens URLs in each tweet via … Read more

MySpace link shortener makes early inroads on Twitter

It has only been a week since MySpace launched its two-way sync with Twitter, but already the service has made an impact on the popular microblog.

MySpace's "lnk.ms" is now the second most used link-shortening service on Twitter, according to statistics compiled by Twitter link tracker Tweetmeme.

Over the past 24 hours, lnk.ms was included in 15.66 percent of all tweets containing links, Tweetmeme claims. It follows only Bitly, which was used in more than 69 percent of tweets featuring links to outside sources. TinyURL, Owly, and Isgd follow MySpace's lnk.ms with … Read more

Bitly partners with Yfrog for picture sharing

This post has been corrected from the original. See fifth paragraph.

Short URL powerhouse Bitly is baking into its Web service the Yfrog picture-sharing service made by Imageshack. Yfrog competes with other Twitter-friendly image-sharing services such as Twitpic.

For users who want to create easy short links to images they upload from their computers, this will be a bit of a time-saver. Also, users will get the real-time click through data from their images on the Bitly site.

Imageshack CEO Jack Levin says that his 11-person company services 3 billion images a day. That's the highest hit-per-employee ratio … Read more