Filed under: Utilities, Web services, web 2.0
Lessn offers an easy way to create your own URL shortener
With all the drama around brand-name URL shorteners, a lot of blogs have advised people to skip the big guys and create their own. Easier said than done, though, right? Well, maybe not: Lessn, a service from brilliant designer Shaun Inman (who also developed the Fever feed reader), makes getting a personal shortURL as simple as possible. All you need is some server space where you can throw up some PHP and MySQL. All you have to know how to do to set up Lessn is enter some login info in a php config file and upload the whole package to your server. After that, you're good to go. You can put in your full URL, and Lessen will give you a short one for it. Then, whenever you want to use your shortener, you can click the included bookmarklet. It might be a lot more work than just using Bit.ly, but having your own shortlinks on your own server means that you don't have to risk a service shutting down and leaving you with dead links.
[via Lifehacker]
Shaun Inman has released 
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
