Filed under: Utilities, Web services
Tinyarro.ws: tiny URLs get even tinier
Sure, we've reported on some seriously miniscule URL shorteners before. Bit.ly and tr.im are both respectably lacking in length, and ought to work fine when you need to cram a link into a Twitter post. Tinyarro.ws takes the shrinking game to a whole new level, though, by using unicode characters to get even shorter addresses. Not only is the base link down to three characters and a dot -- ?.ws -- but Tinyarro.ws also saves space after the slash. For example, http://?.ws/? is the shortened link to Download Squad. I'm not claiming that I know how to type any of those unicode characters, but that's probably not a huge drawback, because tiny links mostly get copied and pasted. As far as competing with other bookmarking sites on features, this one lacks any kind of traffic tracking, but it does have a bookmarklet and custom URLs.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Kenn.keeper said 6:18PM on 3-07-2009
I tried this with a Google search and got some type of strange letters I think were Asian. Would have been nice if it were in American english, may be good for those who's primary language isn't english (unless I missed something)
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r3loaded said 7:02PM on 3-07-2009
It doesn't matter what the characters are since u just copy and paste the lot. Existing services use random letters and numbers, this just takes it to the next level by using all possible Unicode characters.
Kenn.keeper said 10:31PM on 3-07-2009
Sorry for the misinformation or understanding, I was referring to if you place the tinyarro link into a google search you will come up with the search page in Asian language not English as I have it set for, try it,,,,,,Kenn
Andrew Pollack said 6:56PM on 3-07-2009
They should use my new hash algorithm. Its still in testing, but all hash values compute to only a single bit in length. Unfortunately the collision rate is still a little high, but I think we can fix that by shifting the whole thing to imaginary numbers -- multiplying by -1 then taking then square root.
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RP said 10:25PM on 3-07-2009
I don't see the Unicode arrow character in either Firefox 3.0 or IE6. Firefox shows a box with a 0x2781, and a box with 0xC4FB.
Do I need to for the page's encoding format?
Test again: http://➡.ws/쓻
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RP said 10:27PM on 3-07-2009
I'm also not getting automatic underlining of the entire hyperlink... could be hard to click. Seems like a half-baked idea... please fix and try again.
Steve said 3:02PM on 3-08-2009
With all the spam and viruses spread on .ws domains good luck getting people to even click on them.
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Diddle said 1:31AM on 3-09-2009
<borat> This site is usefulnot. </borat>
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