This is one of those really, really useful websites that make themselves such a basic part of your life that you forget to tell anyone about them. Sorry I've been holding out on you.

You know how annoying it is when you want to share a weblink with someone and it's so insanely large that there is no way in the world that anyone will copy it down correctly?

Let's use this as an example:

http://www.amazon.com/Lives-They-Left-Behind-Suitcases/dp/1934137073/ref=wl_it_dp?ie=UTF8&coliid=I16P44YOKQ94PA&colid=2JQX7AV3CZQ03

Sure, it's ugly and annoying dumped in the middle of a blog, but that really isn't such a big deal is it? I mean, all you have to do is click on it; so what if it is as ugly as a Bulgarian mother-in-law?*

Lets put it this way:

Have you ever wanted your students to write down a web address, but it was so big and cumbersome that you ended up not giving them the link?

TinyURL does something very simple and quite wonderful. It makes long web addresses short.

Let's use that same Amazon link as an example. If you run it through TinyURL, it comes out like this:

http://tinyurl.com/5rgw4n


You now have a smaller version of the same web address that you can use anywhere. It is a permenent URL that will stay good forever (at least in theory.)


It's that simple and that cool.



* My apologies if you happen to BE a Bulgarian mother-in-law; it just a phrase I've always wanted to use.

(Great. I've got three readers and with my luck two of them are in the Former Warsaw Pact. Sigh...)








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