Link shorteners are popular with the Twitter-set. After all, with a 140-character limit, no one wants to waste space on long links. As a result, we get short yet nondescriptive links like http://tinyurl.com/5m3ksw. This is an actual URL I tried to follow. I don’t know where it goes because it made Intel’s proxies barf. Other Intel twitterers (thanks @jabancroft and @jmoriarty) informed me Intel’s proxies have been blocking tinyURLs links recently. Turns out the proxies may be blocking shortened links as a security measure because they don’t know the destination.
I want a URL shortener that doesn’t send me directly to the link. Instead, it should take me to an intermediate page that shows me the destination link and lets me choose whether I want to go. I suspect the proxies would like this, too.
Turns out, nsfw.in already does (almost) what I want. For example http://nsfw.in/90ed49 is a link to blogan.net. It also tells me (erroneously in this case) that the link is not safe for work.
Anyone know of a link shortener that works like NSFW, but without the NSFW warning?
Update. Tweetdeck lets you choose from a bunch of link shorteners. Of these, two let you provide a preview page.
- TinyURL provide a preview if you add eight characters to your “shortened” link: http://tinyurl.com/5k8fge becomes http://preview.tinyurl.com/5k8fge.
- is.gd provides a preview if you put a hyphen at the end of the shortened link: http://is.gd/1WXS becomes http://is.gd/1WXS-.