Slashdot Mirror

OK, I run a (small) URL shortening site: http://shortify.com/

You're wrong on several counts. First, URL shorterners were never designed to save bandwidth. The whole idea is absurd, since you're introducing (at least) several hundred bytes of HTTP headers for the 302 redirect every time someone clicks a link.

Second, abuse is certainly an issue that I deal with. But it's perfectly managable. Spammers submit a lot of links, because many of them stop working once the message boards they've spammed take their posts down. And they submit a lot of links from the same IP, because they don't have a lot of IPs. The combination of the two makes it very easy to nail spammers (and their links) with an IP ban.

Now, if someone starts botnetting this, then we've got a problem. But the solution there is to shut down the botnets. You can never disable every service that could potentially be useful to a zombie machine.

Where URL shortening sites are useful is when URLs need to be written down or spoken. Sometimes the person who needs the URL doesn't have access to their email. Or maybe they don't want to give you their email address. Or maybe they're trying to type the address into their iPhone. Or maybe they need to put it on a poster or another printed document.

If a temporary page area is what you're looking for, one of the many personal Wiki services out there is probably a better bet. My project, Wikinote, requires only a username and password to sign up (no email address or other info), provides a decent amount of Wiki markup (though very little control over page appearence), and keeps page history if you ever need to revert. In addition, SSL is used throughout the page, passwords are salted and hashed (and never stored), and there is integration with Shortify to automatically save URLs for later reference.

As the creator and administrator of a Wiki service myself (Wikinote), I have to wonder what Wikipedia is truly thinking.

Wikinote and its sister website, Shortify, have seen their share of abuse. Most of the time it's SSH password-cracking scripts that try millions of usernames and passwords (and make 1GB logfiles with the auth failures - password authentication is disabled on WikinoteShortify). Sometimes you get a user who will try to fill the DB with random garbage.

On WikinoteShortify, disk space is extremely limited, so the major focus of our anti-abuse methods are in limiting the size of individual pages (64KB). Abuse still happens, though.

I've often thought of using CAPATCHAs or email verification to slow down the tide of bogus signups. But, realistically, that would cause more trouble for my users than it would for the spammers.

Abuse is going to happen. Do what you can to limit it. But don't stomp on your users while you are doing it.

That's the problem with limiting page creation to signed-in users. Spammers will create an account (or many, through a script) and attack. The extra step of an HTTP POST to get a new account is nothing for a Python script (nor, mind you, is the block on Python's user-agent). If you think you're accomplishing something, you're not - people will still find a way to vandalize Wikipedia.

The real question is why it is so difficult to detect bogus page creation. Wikipedia has always relied on human intervention to prevent abuse. There's always someone watching. Why is page creation any harder to audit than editing?

Dude, first of all, use the URL: tag, and second of all, use shortify to wrap NSFW URLs.

Using Shortify (with the NSFW option on the "More Options" page):

- Provides a warning page to those of us using computers at work or in public locations
- Provides work users a way of avoiding having the URL sent over the pipe at all (the "NSFW warning" page doesn't actually contain the URL)
- Provides users with a simple way of seeing the URL ("Show URL" button on the NSFW warning page)
- Doesn't insert the (potentially offensive) URL into the Slashdot article

Really, it's just common sense:

http://shortify.com/FB0

Here's an excellent interview with Scott Richter from The Daily Show: Scott Richter Interview (9.9MB, Windows Media)

It seems that Microsoft is under assult from many angles - rightfully so, in many cases. But what do your coworkers do when they see websites like this one? Do they clam up and ignore what might be legitimite criticism, or do they actually listen and learn? As the Linux guy at Microsoft, how do you keep from being ignored by the rest of Redmond?

Well, signed patches for one. And compatibility with practically every device on the planet. And hundreds of thousands more applications.

I run Debian on the server that powers http://shortify.com/. It's a fine OS. But sometimes I want to be able to play Half-Life 2 or WOW. That's where Windows comes in.

You can always use Shortify to access websites from a mobile phone. It's like TinyURL, but the part after the slash is entirely numeric.

More importantly, you can access Shortify by typing the address out using the numbers on your phone.

From a PC:
http://shortify.com/

From a Phone:
http://74678439.com/
(SHORTIFY on the number pad)

Examples:
http://74678439.com/1187
(Yahoo! Mobile)
http://74678439.com/1188
(Slashdot Mobile)

It's not an ideal solution, but it's considerably easier than typing out the full URL using multitap.

http://shortify.com/1162

The site looks neat and clean...and works! However, more details in the "About" page, like how it all works, and who's paying for the bandwidth, etc. woud be appreciated :)

http://shortify.com/1126

"I imagine it being something like tinyurl for browsing from phones."

It's already happening. I operate a TinyURL-equivilent-website, http://shortify.com/, and I just registered the numerical equivilent of that URL (http://74678439.com/). As soon as the DNS comes up, you'll be able to use the service from your web-enabled mobile phone. The website is basic HTML/CSS (no tables, no images), so it should have no problem rendering in most phone browsers.

Note also that, unlike TinyURL, Shortify uses 100% numbers for shortened URLs, so they are more phone friendly. And the homepage is only 1583 bytes, almost 1/2 the size of Google (and about 8 times smaller if you include Google's logo).

Give it a spin.