TinyUrl?

[Dark Jaguar]

Randi seems to recently be fascinated by this TinyUrl thing. At first description, it seemed neat, but now it's actually becoming annoying. Sometimes I like to just right click on a hyperlink or just get a rough idea where it leads by looking at the shortcut, but this sort of prevents that without going through that site's servers.

Has anyone informed Randi of (a href="web site address") short phrase (/a) yet? (replacing () with <>) Seems that would do the job just as well (making the link shorter) but wouldn't be inconvenient to other people looking at the site.

[BenK]

most places, I don't trust tinyurl links as they can be a cover for goatse. I very much prefer using the href.

[Almo]

And what if TinyURL suddenly starts popping ads in there? I think TinyURL is evil, unless there's a Constitutional Amendment stating they can't put ads on it.

[chulbert]

I can also imagine this screws with search engine indexing. Engines such a Google weigh a URL based on links to it from other pages. If you link to a site using TinyURL, does the actual destination site accumulate the little "+1" properly? Dunno.

[kevin]

Randi may use tinyurl BECAUSE it screws with google indexing. He probably doesn't want to increase the page rank of goofball sites.

[Dark Jaguar]

He also uses it for sites that aren't goofball.

[geni]

Randi may use tinyurl BECAUSE it screws with google indexing. He probably doesn't want to increase the page rank of goofball sites.

Pagerank seems to have little significance these days.

[kevin]

i use pagerank as a shortcut to mean "boost their results in search engines."

You don't want some nut job to jump to the top of google's search results because Randi was dissing on them but linked to them.

[TobiasTheViking]

I believe tinyrl is used for the people that print this and read it. A link which is just a highlighted word will not function on a printed version. So tinyurl is what is used to keep the link small.

This is an opinion, an idea. Nothing more

[kevin]

I believe tinyrl is used for the people that print this and read it.

print? Only communists print anymore. Oh wait....

[Abdul Alhazred]

If you don't mind accepting a persistent cookie:

http://tinyurl.com/preview.php

Don't want to be instantly redirected to a TinyURL and instead want to see where it's going before going to the site? Not a problem with our preview feature.

[Jeff Wagg]

Thanks Abdul, that's a great link.

OK, the TinyURL story..

If I use links like this http://cgi.ebay.com/JODIE-FOSTER-Amazing-Randi-SEAN-YOUNG-Interview-1987_W0QQitemZ7040248491QQihZ014QQcategoryZ280QQss PageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
you can see the problem.

If I use links like this (http://www.randi.org/) that don't show the URL, people who print can't visit the URL by typing it in.

TinyURL allows for better formatting and the ability of folks printing things to just enter the URL.

Is this a perfect solution? Nope. All criticisms of TinyURL that I've seen here are valid.

[malaka]

I like the solution many folks use on Slashdot. They use the href tag followed by the root site in brackets. Such as this (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=58696) [randi.org].

[Jeff Wagg]

I like the solution many folks use on Slashdot. They use the href tag followed by the root site in brackets. Such as this (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=58696) [randi.org].

Right, but that doesn't solve the printing problem.

[Dark Jaguar]

I believe a solution to printing problems could be done with the right browser. Simply set up pages so that every single hyperlink has a superscripted number and then put the link each one actually goes to in an index as the very last page (or pages I guess) that the document prints with the superscripting there. BAM!

[Almo]

print? Only communists print anymore. Oh wait....

What about Paper Illuminati members and the people they control?

[Almo]

Thanks Abdul, that's a great link.

OK, the TinyURL story..

If I use links like this http://cgi.ebay.com/JODIE-FOSTER-Amazing-Randi-SEAN-YOUNG-Interview-1987_W0QQitemZ7040248491QQihZ014QQcategoryZ280QQss PageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
you can see the problem.

If I use links like this (http://www.randi.org/) that don't show the URL, people who print can't visit the URL by typing it in.

TinyURL allows for better formatting and the ability of folks printing things to just enter the URL.

Is this a perfect solution? Nope. All criticisms of TinyURL that I've seen here are valid.

THIS is why I read and post a lot in this forum. Well reasoned responses like this.

Edit: the damn -ed -es typo again. :(

[Jeff Wagg]

I believe a solution to printing problems could be done with the right browser. Simply set up pages so that every single hyperlink has a superscripted number and then put the link each one actually goes to in an index as the very last page (or pages I guess) that the document prints with the superscripting there. BAM!

That's not a bad solution. The only thing I don't like about is.. more work for me. :( (some of which is not obvious)

But this is, after all, my job. So I'll consider it. Thanks for the suggestion.

[Dark Jaguar]

Oh yes, and yeah I suppose that could work for the actual page setup as well :D. I was thinking more of a universal solution built into a browser's print setup so it automatically generates this "page index" whenever you print a page.

[Jeff Wagg]

Oh yes, and yeah I suppose that could work for the actual page setup as well :D. I was thinking more of a universal solution built into a browser's print setup so it automatically generates this "page index" whenever you print a page.

Well, I should just bite the bullet and use CSS to create a different version for people who print. I'll add it to the todo list. But that todo list is pretty looooongg...

Speaking of which, I have some challenge stuff to post.

[Smike]

...so confused...

...who would print a webpage and then decide to type in the [rule 8] link

:confused:


...seriously??

[Jeff Wagg]

...so confused...

...who would print a webpage and then decide to type in the [rule 8] link

:confused:


...seriously??

I know it seems odd to me too, but if you were 80, and struggling with a totally new technology, you might do some odd things too.

[Dark Jaguar]

Well while I hadn't thought of it before myself I can see a perfectly normal situation where that might come up. You know all those people in this forum talking about confronting people with odd beliefs by first printing out large streams of text from various sites and presenting them to that person? Well, if those printed out documents have links on them to OTHER documents and the person actually bothers reading any of it, it would be nice if they could actually type those links into their browser at home.

So I can see situations where it would be convenient to be able to print out the actual one. I was just offering a solution that didn't involve tinyurl's issues.

[Wowbagger]

I seem to recall most browsers can print a table of links with a web page, if that's what people want. So, you don't need to make sure the URLs are printed in the body.

I don't trust TinyURL simply because when their server goes down, none of your links to any outside sites that use it will work.

[Dark Jaguar]

If browsers already have that built in, the only issue is education. In which case, all the commentaries can simply have a small paragraph added at the bottom imparting this sage wisdow to the users.

[Wowbagger]

If browsers already have that built in, the only issue is education. In which case, all the commentaries can simply have a small paragraph added at the bottom imparting this sage wisdow to the users.
Precisely!

ETA: IE has this feature on the Options tab of the Print dialog box.

[Hauteden]

I like the here (http://www.randi.org) method for online browsing. And I understand that some may wish to print the information. So how about another idea I haven't seen listed, a Link Bibliography. Basically a collection of the links used in the article which are referenced by the article.

This is my idea (http://www.randi.org).[1] Could this work or would it be too confusing?


Link Bibliography

[1] http://www.randi.org James Randi Education Foundation



The Bibliography could be placed on the same page as the article or on a separate page. I believe that this would make most people happy, at least from what I have read.

Hauteden

[SphereGuy]

When you use a Tiny URL link, how long is the link good for? Does it ever expire?

[roger]

"The printing problem" Is this a real problem, in that you get regular complaints about it, or are you just conjecturing.

Because your website is already littered with links where you dont' see the href if you print it out. Like the "click here to read more" link on the front page (or any other link).

This is how the internet works. Just one random example from a major newspaper (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?node=cityguide/profile&id=793024&lat=38.8878000&lon=-77.0275000&displaySearchTerm=&displaySearchLocation=&categories=Museums):

On that page, the link for the website for the Freer Gallery of Art displays at "Web site", not www.asia.si.edu (http://www.asiai.si.edu)

Ask yourself why you have a unique problem that you have to solve in a different way than every other major content provider in the world.

[joller]

Originally Posted by malaka :
I like the solution many folks use on Slashdot. They use the href tag followed by the root site in brackets. Such as this [randi.org].

Right, but that doesn't solve the printing problem.
It does if instead of 'this' you put in the tinyurl link.
ie.
http://tinyurl.com/6 [mapquest.com].

This way the people who want to see which website hosts the article, have the website name in the square brackets, and people who want to type in short address into a browser, can type in the 'tinyurl' address.

[joller]

Ask yourself why you have a unique problem that you have to solve in a different way than every other major content provider in the world.

Because JREF cares about people who print out the articles, and other websites don't?