Sunday, June 17, 2007

Use Embiggen to expand tinyURL

We all know how useful is tinyURL, the service which shorten any URL to manageable limits.
But every good things comes packaged with bad things. So is here.
The drawback of tinyURL is that the person clicking it doesn't know beforehand where is he being led to. See Lifehacker's observation on it.

Embiggen is a useful tool, which you can use to expand any tinyURL to know what is hidden beneath it. Publishers / Bloggers and browsers can use it in different ways.

  • Publishers / Bloggers: They can insert a code into their template, which will give you a button on your page.As soon as the visitors on your page click this button, all the tinyURLs on this page will expand for his convenience.
  • Browsers / Surfers: They can create a bookmarklet on their Bookmark toolbar and click it to expand the tinyURLs on a page.