Shorten it up!

URL Shorteners

An oldie but a goodie.  My tech tip this week for my administrative team is a worthwhile blog post for everyone.  It was a good reminder how tools change and we have to keep spiralling back to show relevant content and possible new tools along with it.

My staff continues to love digital, but we have several who continue to use the paper pencil and whiteboard when training, teaching, meeting, etc.  Posting URLs in a digital space like Classroom, Moodle, Web, or other medium is no big deal and we don't care how long and ugly they are.

But if you want an on the fly formative, survey, exit ticket or have people access something quickly sometimes the quickest is to put up a URL and have them type it in, but with the length of the URLs in Google Apps, or anything else for that matter, is crazy.  I would never put one on the board unless it was SUPER short... 20 characters or less is always my goal.

URL shorteners to the rescue.  Their are tons of them out their and they all have their pros and cons.  PS.  Great for Twitter too with it's limited character count.

Here are a few of my favorites and why:

• bit.ly - I love that it is short and if you log into it you can have it store all of them so that you can easily find them again or look at the analytics on whether the short url is being used.  Another bonus is to customize them with real words that make them easier to use than random characters.  An added bonus is that it has a Chrome extension to quickly make them on the fly.
• gg.gg - Super short, customizable, and has QR code generator. You can login and save your shortened links too.  Also you can see the hits from which ip they came from.
• is.gd - Super short, customizable, hit tracking, button to make lowercase pronounceable, super quick with no ads.
• goo.gl - Google's tool connected with your Google account. Tracks clicks and provides QR code.  Also Chrome extension.  Non customizable.
• tinyurl.com - The one that started it all.  Handy, quick, no customizing links or login.

Enjoy and remember to shorten those links!