Have you ever gone to a page, I mean a really cool page and found that it’s address seems to stretch on and on for miles? We’re talking about a never ending type of address, the kind you couldn’t tell a friend about over the phone unless he gave you the next five years of his life? This might be the best sight you’ve ever come across, but after you realize it takes up more than an entire line of text, you come to the conclusion that sharing it is going to present a serious issue; or is it? OK, one option you might try is Emailing the link to your friend praying that your Email program won’t break the obnoxiously long URL up into multiple lines thereby making it unclickable. Another option of course would be to get new friends, friends that aren’t into the Internet and therefore, wouldn’t care about that really cool site you found in the first place. Nah, that wouldn’t be much fun either. Now, there’s a third and less traumatic option.

Tinyurl is a free service that allows you to convert any web address, no matter how long, to a, well tiny and manageable one. For example, using google to search for “yummy pizza places in Augusta, Maine” resulted in a resulting page with a URL of http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Yummy+pizza+places+in+Augusta+Maine&btnG=Google+Search. Pretty long, eh? Using Tinyurl, that same address becomes http://tinyurl.com/69fx6x. That’s a reduction from 91 characters to 25! And no, I didn’t actually count them, Tinyurl shows how much space you save as a way to show off how cool the application really is.

So, how does it work? First, go to the page with the really long URL. This might be a page resulting from a search query, the address of a blog post, or any one of a number of things. Next, copy the lengthy address from your address bar. Now, go to www.tinyurl.com, this is where the magic happens. Paste the lengthy URL you just copied into the blank on the page and click the “make tiny URL” button. Tinyurl will generate a unique tiny URL for your site and will display it along with a show-offy statistic describing exactly how much shorter your Tinyurl really is. Copy this newly created URL and share it. Share it with your friends. Share it with the world! Your new tiny URL is small enough to paste into Email, an instant messaging client, or just about anything else you can think of. Heck, it’s short enough that if you had to, you could call your friend and just dictate it.

So, what’s it cost? What’s the catch? Tinyurl is absolutely free. It’s just one of those utilities out there that make life a wee bit simpler and which help make those long URLs a thing of the past.

Happy surfing,

Steve