Compressing a Long URL

Sometimes, when hand coding HTML isn’t an option, inserting a hyperlink can be a pain. This is especially true when the URL is over 30 characters long.

While updating my status on Twitter, it became apparent that I needed to find a solution. Some users claimed inserting an <a href=”url”></a> tag would do it — it didn’t for me. Others said Twitter would also compress the long URL for you — no such luck. Maybe I’m doing something wrong.

Twitter Help didn’t give me any answers so I went off-site and found http://phaze.me/. This free service will compress any URL you give it into a short URL (ie. http://phaze.me/18qq). You can also customize it (ie. http://phaze.me/Free Stanford course on developing iPhone software).

Similar services are available here:
http://bit.ly/
http://tinyurl.com/
http://lizzer.com/