Teach42

I’ve used TinyURL off and on over the years, but my usage of it really started skyrocketing when Twitter came on to the scene. When you’re limited to 140 characters, every single character is incredibly valuable! Shortening a URL down by even just a couple characters can really give you some breathing room.

For those of you that don’t know, TinyURL let’s you plugin in a really long URL and it’ll give you a teeny tiny shortcut to it. For example, if I wanted to tell my parents where to find photos of Aiden, I could tell him to go to http://flickr.com/photos/teach42/tags/aiden/ That’s a pretty long URL though. By using TinyURL, I can shorten that to http://tinyurl.com/2pbnyn It may not be pretty, but it’s MUCH easier to share with someone. And this can be particularly valuable when you’re trying to share a link to something like a Google Map of Wrigley Field:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&q
=wrigley+field,+chicago,+il&ie=UTF8&ll=41.94812,-87.65532&spn=0.002055,0
.005879&t=h&z=18&om=1

Trouble is, many schools block TinyURL. Some are worried about people not being able to see what’s behind that URL until they click on it. Others consider it a method to get around filters (although that one has always boggled me a bit). And let’s face it, TinyURL is just so bland… Wouldn’t it be nice of there was a sleeker, shinier, more Edu-friendly way to shorten your URLs?

Well, just in time for the holidays I’ve got a little present for you! The Teach42 Magic URL Shrinker! Wouldn’t you rather have Teach42.com/go as a shortened URL than TinyURL? I know I would!

Some of you may be thinking… “But Steve, isn’t Teach42.com/go a few characters more than TinyURL.com? Well yes, but TinyURL adds 6 more characters to give you a unique URL. Mine will only add on 1 or 2 characters. So for the first 3800 URLs people shrink, it will be as small or smaller than TinyURL. So I think we’re in good shape for a while!

Oh yeah, and the Teach42 Magic URL Shrinker comes in two different flavors. The first flavor is the traditional, quick method. Plug in a URL, it gives you the Teach42 shrunken version of it. The other version has a few safety features for people who are concerned about security. When someone clicks on the URL, it doesn’t take them directly to the destination. Instead, it takes to an intermediary page that gives people a warning and let’s them see what the destination URL is before they decide whether or not to click on it. Same short URL, but a little more edu-friendly for the security conscious among us. Both flavors are full of Teach42 karma though.

I didn’t write the code for this. Full credit for that goes to TopHat Stuff Go! It was very easy to install and not too difficult to tweak to my needs. If you’d prefer to have your own URL shortener, feel free to download the code and install it yourself! Otherwise, go ahead and take advantage of the Teach42 Magic URL Shrinker. It’s there at your disposal. Oh, and for those of you worried about how long it’s going to be available, I’ll make sure that it’s up and active as long as Teach42 is around. And trust me when I say i’m not going anywhere

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