URL shortening services are getting a lot more use nowadays because of character-restricted microblogging services like Twitter. These services (like the popular TinyURL service) take a long URL and replace it with a much shorter one, thus saving you vital characters.
If I had some time on my hands, I'd create an on-line service which acted as a front-end for Twitter. You would type in your Twitter post and the service would shorten any URLs. Then it would try to replace any long words with shorter synonyms. Then it would try to drop extraneous words, and perhaps punctuation.
To interact with the service you'd be able to "dail up" the aggressiveness of the shortening and veto specific substitutions. Or have an "I'm feeling lucky" button which would do just enough shortening to get the post under 140 characters and then immediately post it.
If anyone creates this service, I want a cut! And I want to be in on the early beta!
Posted by James at September 2, 2008 9:33 AMAw. That's my favorite part of Twitter - whittling down a long tweet!
Posted by: Julie at September 2, 2008 10:04 AMLOL, I want to write it. I would make capricious substitutions, though, interject LOLSpeak, and modify all socially conservative remarks to have the opposite connotation. Okay, maybe I shouldn't write it.
Posted by: Maggie at September 2, 2008 10:34 AMI dunno, Maggie. I think a lot of tweets could be improved with your technique. :)
Posted by: Julie at September 2, 2008 12:11 PMSounds like a great idea. Since it's a front-end for Twitter, and you want to use the Google-like "I'm feeling lucky" feature, and Google will try to buy it from you any way ... maybe you can call it Giggle!
Posted by: Kitten Herder at September 3, 2008 8:29 AM