TinyURL

I don’t know why I haven’t used this free resource before.  Today I was helping my wife with a presentation she is giving to a group of high school students that are thinking of becoming teachers.  She showed me the URL for ODE’s teacher licensure information.

http://www.ode.state.oh.us/GD/Templates/Pages/ODE/ODEPrimary.aspx?Page=2&TopicID=1222&TopicRelationID=1283

Can you believe that?  ODE re-did their web site last year and now most of their URLs are more than 80 characters.  For comparison, look at these nice short licensure URLs:

Arizona – http://www.ade.state.az.us/certification
Florida – http://www.fldoe.org/edcert
Indiana – http://www.doe.state.in.us/dps

Unfortunately we are stuck with that huge ODE link here in Ohio.

What if I could shorten it to

http://tinyurl.com/2ayfzy

That’s what TinyURL does.  Best of all, it is absolutely free.  You don’t even have to give them your email address.  You can go there right now with your super long URL.  Paste that URL into the box.  Your new 18 character URL will be generated.  That URL will never expire.  You can distribute it to as many people as you like and it works forever.  If you ever forget that URL, create a new one.  It takes five seconds.

BTW – Once you put a long URL into TinyURL, it will remember the associated short URL.  If you take ODE’s ridiculously long URL and put it in right now, it will give you the same short URL I provided above.