Printed Matters

This gathering is mainly for my own purposes. But I thought it might be somewhat useful to some other developer so I’m posting it.

TinyURL

Format: GET http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url=<your url here>

Returns: string

bit.ly (Requires API key)

Format: GET http://api.bit.ly/shorten?version=2.0.1&longUrl=<your url here>&login=<your login here>&apiKey=<your api key here>

Returns: JSON [default] or XML

is.gd

Format: http://is.gd/api.php?longurl=<your url here>

Returns: string

Snipurl [snipr.com, snurl.com] (Requires API key)

Format: POST request

Returns: XML

tr.im (Requires API key over 48 URLs per day)

Format: POST or GET http://api.tr.im/api/trim_url.<format>?url=<your url here>

Returns: XML or JSON

cli.gs (API not required)

Format: GET http://cli.gs/api/v1/cligs/create?url=<your url here>

Returns: string

twurl.nl (API not required)

Format: POST request

Returns: string

Shorteners seen on Twitter with no API

shrt.at (API not ready)

budurl.com (API not ready)

url.ie (no API)

Via TechCrunch: Here’s a social bookmarking site that downloads the full text of the pages you bookmark so you can search through that text. Yesterday I did a post about bit.ly and I talked about how these new URL shortening sites that are springing up should get into social bookmarking, because it’s a natural fit. While you’re on there getting a shorter URL, it would be a simple matter to also bookmark the page. Now here’s another parallel: both bit.ly and del.izzy go and grab the page when you shorten its URL or bookmark it, respectively.

Why is Google not in this space? It wouldn’t have to go grab the page when someone bookmarks a page or shortens an URL – it has already spidered it, in all likelihood. And the bookmarking aspect would integrate nicely with GMail/Reader and the sharing features there.

Update: Google does do bookmarks. Who knew? Pretty low profile. And no social aspect (they’re private bookmarks). And of course, no integrated URL shortening service.

Just a quick thought on bit.ly, the new URL shortener that everyone is talking about. Why are they talking about it? Well, it adds features on to URL shortening that you never knew you needed. Like semantic web analysis.

But isn’t that a job for search engines? Why would you want semantic web analysis just on the few URLs that users have shortened?

Here’s what a URL shortener should really do: become a bookmarking site like delicious. Why? Because if a user is already on your site, entering a URL for shortening, it would be a simple matter to also let him add a few tags and a description and save it as a bookmark. I mean, while he’s there.

What does this have to do with newspapers? Not much, except that it illustrates an important principle: leverage what you already do.

More and more these days I’ve been using Wordpress as the base for web projects. The code base is fantastic, elegant, and simple, and they care about web standards and proper XHTML output. Plugins and themes are easy to write, and the documentation is excellent.

So, for sites that lend themselves to a certain blogginess – sites that are mainly content, updated regularly, and where the content falls within a few different categories – it’s a good fit. You can update a core code base from the maintainers, while your plugins and themes for that site remain in separate folders and that’s the only stuff you have to maintain.

But, sometimes you need to do non-bloggy stuff. For example, on a site for media lawyers I’m working on, we want a list of all the member lawyers. These lawyers will be able to log on and post things in a contributor or author role, and so they all have accounts on the site. It seemed natural, then, to expand the information stored for each user and use the accounts to generate the member list.

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