As far as I know TinyURL was the first service to trim hypertrophic URLs to a decent size. The URL for this blog for instance translates to http://tinyurl.com/d8zp8 (TinyURL), or http://snipurl.com/f1gr (SnipURL), or
http://hugeurl.com/?YzlmZTk1N2JkYjMwYzliMDM1YWNmYzUzZmUyNWVj
OTAmMTAmVm0wd2QyVkhVWGhUV0docFVtMVNXVll3WkRSV1ZsbDNXa2M1V0ZK
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V01ERkZWbGhrVjJFeVVYZFdha1pXWlZaT2NtRkhhRk5sYlhoWFZtMHhORmxW
TUhoWGJHUllZbGhTV0ZSV1dtRmxWbkJHVjIxMFZXSkdjREZWVjNoelZqSkdj
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WFRXNW9kbFpxUmt0ak1rNUlZVVp3YkdFeGNHOVdWRUpoVkRKTmVWTnJhR2hT
YXpWd1ZtcEtiMWRHV25STlZGSm9UV3RzTkZVeWRHdGhiRXAwWVVoT1ZtRnJO
VlJXTUZwaFpFZE9ObEpzYUdsU01VbzFWbTE0VTFJeFdYZE5WVlpUWVROQ1Yx
WnFUbE5OTVZweFUydDBWRkpzV2xwWGExcDNZVWRGZWxGcmJGZGlXRUpJVmtS
R2ExZEdVbkphUmxKcFZqTm9kbFpHV205Uk1sSnpWMjVTVGxOSGFGQlZiWE40
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R2FGaFRSVXBKVjJ0U1IxTXlUWGxVYTFwaFVqSm9WRlJYTVc5a01WcFlUVVJH
VWsxcmJEUldNalZUVkd4T1NGVnVUbFppV0doWVZHdGFhMk5zV25Sa1IyaHBV
bGhCZDFac1pEUmpNV1IwVTJ4V1UySkdTbGhaYTFwM1lVWndSbHBHWkZSV2Jr
SkpXbFZhVDJGV1NuTmhNMmhYVFc1b1dGbHFTa1psUm1SWldrVTFWMVpzY0ZS
WFZtUTBXVlprUjFkdVZtcFNiVkpQVkZaYWQyVkdWblJrUkVKb1RWVndlbFl5
ZUhkWFIwVjRZMGhLVjFKNlJreGFSV1JIVW14YWMxcEhiRk5OVlZZelZteGFV
MUl4YkZkWGJrcE9WbXh3V0ZsWWNGZFdSbFp5Vm10YVQxVlVNRGs9 (HugeURL), which still might be a mnemotechnic challenge.

doiop is great since it allows to assign your own name for those beasts: http://doiop.com/saurier (if doiop is becoming popular you probably will have to come up with creative pre- or postfixes soon though).

—

Comments:
See also http://digbig.com
posted by Marshall Kirkpatrick : 5/26/2005 03:17:36 AM

Just a few tips on how to make good use of del.icio.us (nothing new to veterans here).

There seem to be two camps when it comes to strategies for tagging. One promotes strict homogenity (tag consistently and as most others tag), the other promotes tagging off the tip of your head.

What works best for me is to apply tags consistently for all types of metadata for a resource, but freely associative for the rest. It is actually no big problem if you have a typo or two in your tags or if you want to rename them later. del.icio.us provides an interface for (batch-) renaming tags, so cleaning them up is a snap.

examples for metatags

qualifiers

_daily, _weekly, _monthly, _2009, … (for flagging items you know you want to check at certain intervals)
*read/review, *inbox, *sometimes,… (for flagging items that are actionable upon)
:interesting, :useful, :idiotic, :funny,… (for flagging the quality)

format

.blog, .wiki, …

It’s useful to assign a tag signifying the format (notice the dot). You want to filter your bookmarks by format later (show me all blogs, not all ressources where the concept blog came to mind.)

addressee

A very nice use case for del.icio.us is to create a shared recommendation space between friends or co-workers (to:flat_erik) or defining intra-group tags, which every member of the group uses to share relevant links (to:gtd_potatoes). If you want me to point me to a ressource, tag it with to:saurierduval and I will pick it up.

conversations

It’s easy to track your conversations on the web. Many people tag entries they commented on with *mycomments or threads in forums they participated in with *mythreads.

credit

via:boingboing, via:kottke,…

I’ll miss you.

Wow, the TiddlyWiki has been amazing before, but the new version is just awesome:

Just for the case you didn’t run across it: it’s a self-contained, browser based Wiki, probably with the cutest user interface for displaying and editing of micro-content chunks around.

current snapshot of my next action balls basket

Recommended:

A few days ago Chris Murtland posted a good set of strategies for deciding on which Next Actions to act upon within a given timeframe. I really love the idea of building a reusable set of patterns (aleatoric next action, mixins,…) that fits ones individual needs.

Broken:

My (frog shaped) timer, and I feel pretty lost without it. I basically used it for various kinds of sprints (anti-clutter sprints, feed sprints,…), but since its gone I just quit some habits. (I installed EggTimer (a nice little app) but it doesn’t really cut it for me.)

Hmm, del.icio.us comes with a pretty minimalistic design nowadays:

One problem with relying on (clever and smart as they might be) webapps (or building ones business on them – as recently promoted by Evan Williams and O’Reilly Radar) is: they do fail.

[Note to self: make an exhaustive list of current dependencies, evaluate the impact for worst and observed cases, come up with some sort of backup, interims, and exit strategies]

Fitlog – A daily chronicle of [Matt Haughey’s] attempts at fitness
The Year of Coffee Blog – Take a photo of each and every cup of coffee and post it
Google Sightseeing – Take you to the best tourist spots in the world via Google Maps’ satellite imagery
Popgadget – Personal Tech for Women
101 Cookbooks – Exploring a collection of cookbooks, one recipe at a time
Chocolate and Zucchine – the fancy side of food
information aesthetics weblog – towards creative information visualization
Mighty Goods – hooray for stuff
PostSecret – ongoing community art project
Tricks of the Trade – Professional secrets from those in the know
IDFuel – the fire to create
Cooking for Engineers – Recipe Tabular Notation Patent Pending

Just added those infamous tag clouds to this blog (as seen on the Observer Blog, Joi Ito, O’Reilly Radar or Ask MetaFilter). I just love them. Whenever I run across them, I have this uncontrollable desire to click on all the tiny tags (I rarely click on the biggies).

Pasta is a handy little tool for adding taggable text (notes, annotations, recipes,…) to the del.icio.us framework. It creates a webpage from the text entered and submits the URL to del.icio.us. Note that the page created is public and can not be modified or deleted.

Part II : bad Pasta

Never mix different types of pasta.

I’m always astonished about how much influence the shapes of the different pasta variants have on the overall taste of a dish, how they combine well with the one sauce but not the other and so on, but I never expected the combination of different shapes (like Spaghetti and Macaroni as I just did) to taste that odd. It seems like the gustatory nerves become confused and irritated, not knowing which signals to send…