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.

Have you ever wanted to post something on Twitter, but found out that its over 140 characters? Of course you have. And after you discovered that, you probably considered blogging it (if you have a blog that is), and decided it wasn't worth your time. You probably resorted to multiple tweets, which quite frankly, is annoying. So what are you supposed to do then? If only there was a way to quickly and easily tweet something over 140 characters...

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.

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