urls

If you're a frequent Webware, reader you might remember Grooveshark, and Grooveshark Lite--two different but equally awesome music-sharing and listening tools. From those same folks comes TinySong, a bit of a play on large link sharing services like TinyURL. However, instead of sharing Web sites with your friends, you're linking them straight to the track.

The service uses the same built-in song search found in Grooveshark Lite, and will simply jump whoever opens the link right to the Web based jukebox. What's nice is whoever is searching will have the short link copied to their clipboard … Read more

Webware reader Amy wrote in to let us know one of her favorite Firefox plug-ins shortText just got updated with a handy new feature. It will now automatically go through any page you're on and seek out any TinyURLs, converting them to the actual URL so you can see where the page links to.

If you want to accomplish a similar feat, there's also a bookmarklet called Embiggen, which will do the same thing without you having to install anything. The key difference between the two is that shortText packs in a bundle of other features like letting … Read more

Like top ten lists? You might like SmashBuys, a link aggregator of the best selling items on the Web. Sites included are Amazon, iTunes, VGchartz, and Downloads from Webware's sister site Download.com. There are nine in all, and clicking any link will send you straight to the product page. You can also hover over any item to learn more about it.

It was pitched to us as a PopUrls for products, which is very true, although Smashbuys users have the added benefit of seeing how popular each link is with the community. Items that get more clicks get … Read more

When you want to convert a long link to a short one from your computer, all it takes is a visit to one of these 10 link-shrinking sites. From a Windows Mobile phone, prospects are much more limited. Thank goodness for ceSnipURL, a free, basic mobile application that threads your gargantuan URL through SnipURL's service and quickly returns a much shorter, more manageable bite. There are a few time-saving tricks packed into this link-swapping puppy, and they're all laid out in the video above.

UPDATE: Gossip blog Valleywag decided to out this for what it is--an April Fool's joke. Oh, well, it would've been funny to see people pick up on it.

With the rise of "microblogging" services like Twitter that limit the number of characters in a post, URL-shortening sites like TinyURL and URLtea have taken off. A new service that just launched, Urlrurl, promises to step it up a notch by tracking the popularity of online memes that are tossed around the Web through viral link-sharing.

"Urlrurl.com stands out from other link shortening services because of its patented Relay-Stick algorithm," a release from the new start-up read, "which dives into the links put through its shortener and exposes common memes across the pages people are clicking on." That sounds pretty cool. It's also connected to the Twitter API, plugging it into one of the biggest pools of URL-shortening activity on the Web.

And there's more: "In early June, a free stats program will launch, as well as a premium service for bloggers and publishers," the release continued. "The premium service will allow publishers to register their site with Urlrurl.com and receive deep insight into how content and memes have traversed the web." Considering that no one can really tell where Internet memes emerge these days--4Chan, Fark, Digg, iVillage--this kind of service, provided it actually works, could give some interesting and oft-hilarious insights.

Urlrurl is headquartered in New York with development offices in China, and counts TechCrunch czar Michael Arrington among its angel investors.… Read more

While Google bombs and sites that operate as giant search engine optimization hacks can make it difficult to find what you're looking for on some search engines, sometimes it's even harder to get to the page of a product or service you saw a promotion for while out and about.

The sad truth is that nearly all of the good domain names are taken. We see it in the products we look at every day that have slight misspellings, missing vowels, or letters tacked on before, after, or sometimes in between regular words. These names can be incredibly … Read more

Link or URL shortening services are nothing new--TinyURL, for example, has been around since January 2002, when site creator Kevin Gilbertson wanted to link directly to newsgroup postings with really long addresses. Indeed, that's the true impetus behind these services; taking really long and unwieldy Web links (to an Amazon or eBay item, for example), and shrinking them down to a more reasonable size. Simply copy and paste the offending URL into the field, hit enter, and voila, you'll get a much shorter link. These shorter links can then be shared via IM or e-mail without the … Read more

LinkBunch is a redirection and shortening service for multiple Web links. The service takes as many links as you can throw at it and puts them together in a "bunch," so when users clicks your link they simply come to a link dump with Snap previews of each page. There's also a simple option to open all of them in their browser window.

If you're used to TinyURL, UrlTea, et al, you know these services can be exceptionally useful for taking large links (like the ones you get from browsing on Amazon.com), and shrinking them … Read more

While there's a giant crowd of people waiting for Digg to unveil its pictures section, there are already several services available for browsing popular news by pictures, including Google News and AOL's Mgnet (coverage). There's also a smaller, more independent group of sites that have been created by fans of some of these sites who have created their own visual solutions. One of them--Reddit Media--has increasingly become so popular it's led to Digpicz (Digg in pictures), and now PicUrls--which is a play on words, and similarity to the popular aggregator PopUrls.

The site … Read more