Don’t you love when you find something online you want to show someone something you found on the Web, and you have an address like this to show them?
Wouldn’t you prefer to read to someone, or email them, something like this?
If you click on both addresses, you’ll find they both take you to the same web site. This is called a URL shortening service, and while it’s still not that pretty to look at, it’s certainly a heck of a lot shorter. (In case you are wondering, URL stands for “Uniform Resource Locator”, the true name of a Web address)
So how difficult is it to do? Not at all! You can either go to a site like TinyURL.com and paste in your address, click a button and you have it. The alternative is to add a bookmarklet to your browser which all that means is you visit their site and you drag the little address they tell you to up to your bookmarks. Once you have that, you go to the page you wish to shorten, which can be any page, click the button, and it will shorten the address for you immediately.
Now, the last part of the address can be customized on most services, but remember that an address can’t be repeated, so it is highly unlikely you could have something like “/john”, but you can make it something that is easier for you to remember when you want to tell it to someone.
Typically I only discuss TinyURL as it is the one I always use, but there are over 90 URL shortening services out there, so you certainly can find one that works the best for you.
