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TinyURL Service

Over at Hawk Wings, Tim Gaden points to the TinyURL Service by Rachel Blackman. Once installed (which annoyingly requires a restart), this Service allows you to create a TinyURL simply by selecting the URL (e.g. in the address bar of your browser) and invoking the Service (either through the Services Menu, with the global hotkey, or with Quicksilver). This saves some steps compared to using TinyURL's bookmarklet. Tim draws attention to this because using TinyURL is one of the workarounds for dealing Mail.app's unfortunate tendency to break links in emails sent from it. Instead of dragging the URL from your browser, just select it and invoke "Shrink URL," and the appropriate TinyURL will appear in your address bar for dragging and dropping. Another ready constituency for the Service is the whole mob of Twitter fanatics, of which you can include us here at TUAW.

Rachel's TinyURL Service is a free download from Riverdark Studios.

[Via Hawk Wings]

Update: In the comments below, Sparks (i.e. Rachel) notes that she has addressed some of the concerns with her first version and has a new version that can Shrink the URL to the clipboard. It can be downloaded from her site here (zip).

Over at Hawk Wings, Tim Gaden points to the TinyURL Service by Rachel Blackman. Once installed (which annoyingly requires a restart), this...
 

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Todd Dominey

Here's the link

http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/networking_security/shrink.html

April 12 2007 at 8:37 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Todd Dominey

Or just use Shrink, a handy dashboard widget.

April 12 2007 at 8:34 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Tod

Hooray for Rachel! This Service really works wonders! I've been using it tonight to create truncated URLs to add to some trolling comments I posted in a couple of die-hard Zune-lovers sites.

The "Shrink to Clipboard" feature is really really great! It's highly recommended for anyone trying to add URLs to emails, blog posts, comments, and any other place where you don't want (or can't) enter those super-long URLs generated by database-driven sites these days (my own included).

Thanks again to Rachel and to Mat for giving us the heads up.

-Tod

April 06 2007 at 1:44 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Sparks

If you copy it into your personal library, yes, a login/logout will do it instead, that's true. Basically, for services, anything that re-launches/re-initializes the appropriate configuration 'space' will do it.

April 05 2007 at 6:58 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Macskeeball

I actually don't think a restart is required. Simply re-logging into OS X should suffice.

April 05 2007 at 6:18 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Sparks

So, evidently this little service tool has gotten some posting coverage, moreso than I expected! Yipe! So, I've done a quick second release for folks. :)

I've added a new 'Shrink URL to Clipboard' service as requested by a couple of folks, so that you can still shrink a URL in a read-only text-field; it just puts the result on the clipboard instead of replacing the original.

http://www.riverdark.net/misc/TinyURL.zip (service)
http://www.riverdark.net/misc/TinyURL-src.zip (source code)

I've repackaged it as a simple drag-and-drop as was suggested; you can drop it into ~/Library/Services to have it just for one user, or into /Library/Services to have it system-wide. To uninstall the old version, just delete /System/Library/Services/TinyURL.service and poof.

A restart /is/ still required before the service gets picked up, but that's a limitation of Apple's system-service stuff... I can't really get around it.

April 05 2007 at 5:00 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Macskeeball

Sejuru, services are basically system-wide. Also, not everyone uses Firefox; I use Camino myself. Services can also be used in Quicksilver.

As for my previous comment, I've made the developer aware of the install location issue, as well as this TUAW post (and thus the comments).

April 05 2007 at 4:20 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Zilla

firefox plugin? what about camino? safari? others? this is a perfect service utility- and particularly useful on web sites like this where somebody may want to paste a long url on the fly without breaking the css or screwing up the url - it converts the url bar displayed address on the fly via the service menu when inside the browser (or any aware app, text edits et al)...

completely and totally worth every second of the restart....

April 05 2007 at 4:16 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Sejuru

Why not just use the Firefox plugin, Tinyurl Creator?

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/126

April 05 2007 at 1:59 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Macskeeball

CAUTION: I just used the File -> Show Files command of Installer.app, and apparently the installer puts the Service bundle within /System. Third party software should *never* modify the system folder unless they absolutely have to. A drag and drop install with directions provided in the disk image should be used instead.

April 05 2007 at 12:33 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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