18.630 making shorter links

               Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 18, No. 630.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                   www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
                        www.princeton.edu/humanist/
                     Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu

   [1] From: Alexandre Enkerli <aenkerli_at_indiana.edu> (5)
         Subject: Re: 18.627 making shorter links?

   [2] From: Baden Hughes <badenh_at_cs.mu.OZ.AU> (7)
         Subject: Re: 18.627 making shorter links?

   [3] From: Bob <rec53_at_bellsouth.net> (10)
         Subject: Make a Shorter Link

   [4] From: David Sitman <david_at_post.tau.ac.il> (8)
         Subject: Re: 18.627 making shorter links?

   [5] From: Marcus Holmes <mch43_at_georgetown.edu> (7)
         Subject: Re: 18.627 making shorter links?

   [6] From: Michael Hancher <mh_at_umn.edu> (17)
         Subject: Re: 18.627 making shorter links?

   [7] From: Robin Cover <robin_at_oasis-open.org> (33)
         Subject: shorter links

--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 07:04:15 +0000
         From: Alexandre Enkerli <aenkerli_at_indiana.edu>
         Subject: Re: 18.627 making shorter links?

People often use this one:
http://tinyurl.com/
Yes, the URL is then quite cryptic and the system isn't more permanent than
other things on the Web, but it works well on mailing-lists when someone
wants to send a temporary link.

--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 07:04:56 +0000
         From: Baden Hughes <badenh_at_cs.mu.OZ.AU>
         Subject: Re: 18.627 making shorter links?

www.tinyurl.com seems to be more popular, at least in the circles I frequent.

not to mention durable resolvers like purl.org, which serve a related
purpose, and can be used for simplification.

there's a risk, and that is that the redirector style services won't
actually tell you anything about your ultimate destination, and also that
the redirectors may become fragile as end content moves around.

Baden

--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 07:05:20 +0000
         From: Bob <rec53_at_bellsouth.net>
         Subject: Make a Shorter Link

Hi Willard, et al.

I've been using this service for about a year; first found it when I
received an e-mail with a link on it. It seems to work just as advertised,
and I don't know why it's not more prevalent, since there is always a need
to chop down the length of some urls to make them more manageable.

I suppose it invites us to think about the next step, perhaps the ability
to author your own link short cuts with a right click as long as you can
host them on a server?

Yours,
Bob Cummings

--[4]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 07:06:02 +0000
         From: David Sitman <david_at_post.tau.ac.il>
         Subject: Re: 18.627 making shorter links?

Dear Willard,

I have used that service successfully, but the one that seems to be most
popular in my Internet circles is: http://tinyurl.com/
One important factor in these shortened links is longevity, and I have a
bit more faith in tinyurl in this respect.

[...]

Best regards,

David

--[5]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 07:07:00 +0000
         From: Marcus Holmes <mch43_at_georgetown.edu>
         Subject: Re: 18.627 making shorter links?

Willard,

There are a variety of these services out there. I use tinyurl.com which
works quite well. No disadvantage to using them that I can see except for
the fact that they may expire after a given amount of time (and therefore
probably should not serve as links on a website.

Cheers,

Marcus

--[6]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 07:07:37 +0000
         From: Michael Hancher <mh_at_umn.edu>
         Subject: Re: 18.627 making shorter links?

Willard,

Recently a librarian drew my attention to OCLC's PURL Service
(<http://purl.oclc.org/>http://purl.oclc.org/), which I haven't used, but
which gives detailed information about the process. Also a commercial site,
<http://tinyurl.com/>TinyURL.com.

      Michael

--
Michael Hancher
Professor and Chair, Department of English
College of Liberal Arts
University of Minnesota
207 Lind Hall
207 Church Street SE
Minneapolis  MN 55455
      612-625-3363; fax 612-624-8228
      <http://english.cla.umn.edu>http://english.cla.umn.edu
      http://mh.cla.umn.edu
--[7]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 07:08:20 +0000
         From: Robin Cover <robin_at_oasis-open.org>
         Subject: shorter links
Hi Willard.  In desperation, I sometimes use tinyurl.com
(http://tinyurl.com/), as in the newsletter entry below.
The risk (obviously) is that the company providing the service
will (1) go defunct, breaking all the links, (2) get bought
by a bad company that will hold you hostage to a demand
for money ("or your links will break), or (3) change
the redirects to point at different objects, e.g., porn.
You can probably think of additional bad outcomes.
Robin
------------------------
Beyond the Big (c): Copyright Becomes "No Right To Copy"
The Editors, Scientific American
Congress, sometimes at the behest of media companies, has erected
immense barriers to derivative works by extending repeatedly both the
length and the scope of copyright protection. A copyright holder no
longer has to register a new work. Any blog, poet's sonnet or even a
child's crayoned drawing now receives copyright automatically. Copyright
in its current form fails to strike a balance between the extremes
[and] overly strong property rights can threaten the Internet as a
medium capable of fostering dynamic interchange of ideas. Nascent
communities of artists, scientists and nonprofits want some way to
share and rework one another's intellectual output without the enormous
legal burdens that come with increasingly draconian rights management.
The entertainment industry has been largely silent on this issue --
its idea of innovation having been the launching of lawsuits against
10-year-olds to punish music pirating. In this environment, the
introduction of Creative Commons's middle path of "some rights reserved"
is surely a welcome arrival.
http://tinyurl.com/6xtdr
See also the summary:
http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2005-03-07-a.html#ScientificAmerican
24 chars for 99 chars
--