Shorten URLS on the Fly « chaotic tech

Shorten URLS on the Fly

28Apr08

I just saw this new service called IS.GD that shortens your URLS for you. I’ve taken a liking to this vs. ShortURL and TinyURL because of the length of the site name and the fact that so far, they’ve only reached 3 characters trailing the domain name.

But here’s the trick: they have an awesome API. And that makes it easy for me to make this quick little bookmarklet, which is after the jump. They only work for Firefox.

1. Javascript Bookmarklet

Make a new bookmark in your bookmark toolbar and make it to:

javascript:void(location.href=’http://is.gd/api.php?longurl=’+location.href)

Put that on your toolbar, and click when you arrive at a webpage. It will show a lone website link, which you can copy away.

2. Search Bookmarklet

Make a bookmark in a folder in your bookmarks; it can be anywhere. Make it to:

http://is.gd/api.php?longurl=%s

(no drag-and-drop, because you’re not supposed to put it on your toolbar)

Now set the keyword to something like ’shorten’. Save it.

Whenever you want to shorten a website, got to your address bar and type your keyword, a space, and then your website (eg. shorten google.com or something). It will open a blank page with a lonely link. That’s it!

This is all done with the API that is.gd made, by the way. Cool, huh?