August 2009

Earlier this morning the URL mapping directory service 301works which will allow short URL service providers the ability to regularly publish their URL mappings in order to preserve links in a historical archive. The service will be managed and maintained by GNIP. This new development comes as a result of tr.im announcing their closure and subsequent reopening, where it became painfully obvious that short URLs need a sort of "wayback machine" archive in order to ensure links exist even after their provider closes or discontinues service.

We will be regularly updating our own mappings from our urlShort service, and plan to offer support in future versions of the open-source urlShort Project for automatic archiving through 301works. Our long term goal for the urlShort Project is to provide anyone, publisher or user, with the software and information they need to operate their own short URL service, in an effort to improve transparency and reliability. This goal goes hand-in-hand with 301works' goal to correct the inherent problems with URL shortening.

The full press release is below.

This is a followup to The Begining of the End: tr.im Shuts Down

When tr.im shut down it looked like the end... Well, it wasn't. tr.im announced yesterday that they were bringing the service back. Of course, there's no way it was a publicity stunt, right? Yeah, I'm not buying it tr.im. It's pretty damn obvious you were having no luck selling, and decided to "shut down" to draw out potential buyers.

I've been a Google fan and user for as long as I can remember at this point, but why? Up until now, no one's really had a product that could challenge Google, but recently Bing has changed that. But, I haven't really used Bing, only played with it and tested it. To really see how good something is you need to use it, and for more than a day too. That's why for the next two weeks I'm changing my default search engine to Bing and using it, and nothing else.

Read more...

Got something you want to say about an event in the tech world? Want to publish a review of an iPhone application? We've opened up registrations to mavrev.com to include allowing you to publish your own blog right here on mavrev.com. Now, why would you want to do that, when you can host your own free blog on WordPress or any other blogging service? Any time a new blog post is made, we'll take a look at it, and if we think it should be featured on the main page of mavrev.com, we'll do just that.

You may be asking, but what about ownership or limits on my posts... Well, there aren't any. Anything published on mavrev.com blogs is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States license (CC BY-NC), which means it can't be used for commercial purposes, and must be attributed to you when republished or built upon. We're also not going to limit or censor anything you post, as long as it isn't spam (defined as content posted with the intent of selling goods or services, or to drive traffic to your own website to "read the full story" etc.) We ask that you respect others in your writings, as well as anyone who may comment on your posts. If you go against these simple rules, we will remove your access to publish new content on mavrev.com.

So, have at it! I know most people don't write blog entries anymore, and prefer to tweet their thoughts, but there's still a place for more in depth and longer articles such as my review of the BNO News iPhone app. Registration is free (of course) and only requires you provide an email address (which we won't use to send anything but password reminders, and notifications that you choose to subscribe to such as replies to your postings), and pick a username (preferably your first name).

Cheers!