Sometimes, shortening yourself is even better....

After putting a beta bot implementation of bit.ly online @ KaraNet, somebody came up with the linkrot argument, and suggested to make the system store resolved URL’s.

Now, the argument is valid, and the suggestion is valid, just that it somehow makes an intermediate service obsolete.....there is no benefit from it any more.
That suggested, hell broke loose, which is another topic that we better don’t touch here.

Long story short, I spend some time aside to put together a Short URL service for KaraNet, and added a bot implementation (which is really very much a small modification of the bit.ly Bot, to give a choice.

The service in action, will take you to the How-To.

Enjoy.

PS: If somebody is interested in a small PHP/Apache2 based implementation of such a shortening service, it’s generally available under a BSD style license on request.

PPS: If somebody from KaraNet is interested in using the service otherwise, also contact me; it’s actually a web service that takes requests (same 4 commands as the bit.ly bot) and returns simple json answers.

Sometimes, shorter is better

The last days I have been working on an integration of Coalevo with bit.ly, in form of a simple messaging bot. This way, whatever type of access we invent for the presence and messaging services, it will be possible to get shortcut links for looooooooooooooong URL’s.

The implementation is based on the REST API to the http://bit.ly service so thanks go to the bit.ly folks! :)

Through the shell access, bit.ly lifting can currently be done with a
BBS style look and feel ☺








Sure enough, we cannot display the thumbnail in the terminal, but here is what it would look like:



Enjoy! ☺

Update 22/10/09:
Added a How-To so KaraNet users can use it :)