iMatt :: The Blog of Matt Clare

FYI: I just turned on Google Analytics again on my site.

I’m trying to reduce the load on my server as much as possible for the inevitable day when the site goes viral. I’ve also been tracking the whole site via the excellent AW Stats tool at http://mattclare.ca/awstats/awstats.pl — which is intentionally public.

I’ll keep using AW Stats for a bit, but once the site’s viral, it’s coming off — or when I get around to it. We’ll see which comes first.

Shortening URLs like http://bit.ly/warningwarning are a bad idea, filling a real need, that seems like it’s not going to just go away.

URLs like http://mattclare.ca/blog/2010/03/18/warning-about-url-shortening are descriptive, help service like Google but they are way too hard to remember and take a long time to type into a web browser. Services like http://tinyurl.com , http://snipurl.com, http://bit.ly , http://ow.ly and others provide a short URL that will re-direct users to the longer version.

Google even created their own shortener at http://goo.gl which, according to the official Google blog:

Google URL shortener is not a stand-alone service; you can’t use it to shorten links directly. Currently, Google URL Shortener is only available from the Google Toolbar and FeedBurner. If the service proves useful, we may eventually make it available for a wider audience in the future.

This was handy a few years ago, and once Twitter took off with its 140 character limit URL shortners took off with it. Most of these services now offer stats on how many clicks a URL has received — perfect for the follower count obsessed Twitterati (I mean that in a positive way – I promise).

The Danger!

The danger with URL shortners is you don’t know where you’re going to end up. With a URL like http://cbc.ca or http://mattclare.ca/blog/2010/03/18/warning-about-url-shortening or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_shortening you have some idea of the reputation of that URL before you follow it. You can identify the domain, see if you know it, some times you can determine if you’re going to arrive at a web page, an image or a PDF document, etc. URL shortners obscure all of that.

This problem of this opaqueness was best demonstrated by the phenomenon of rickrolling. A (debate-ably) worse outcome is individuals clicking the short URL could be redirected to a malware/spyware site. While web browsers like Internet Explorer can be compromised just by visiting URLs this is a bad idea!

Enter Shady URL, at http://www.shadyurl.com . A web site that creates short URLs that look extra dangerous to click: For example http://mattclare.ca/blog/2010/03/18/warning-about-url-shortening becomes http://5z8.info/malicious-cookie_h7l1k_peepshow . Shady URL’s slogan is “Don’t just shorten your URL, make it suspicious and frightening.” It’s about time these URLs became as frightening looking as they potentially are. Isn’t a happy ending made that much better by overcoming a challenge along the way?

URL Shortners aren’t going away any time soon. The broader Internet has adapt to this phenomanon.

What you can do:

A few things you can do are use third party clients for Twitter that let you preview URLs – like http://tweetdeck.com does. Or use the optional services some shorteners already have in place. Two examples are http://biy.ly/info and http://preview.tinyurl.com two locations you can use to both preview the URL you’re being redirected to and get stats on how many times the URL has been clicked.

For example:

• http://bit.ly/warningwarning can be changed to http://bit.ly/info/warningwarning
• http://tinyurl.com/yz4r5os can be changed to http://preview.tinyurl.com/yz4r5os

There are also Firefox Add-ons like bit.ly preview.

You’ve been warned! Please do your part to protect others and yourself.

More Information:

Something else I learnt while writing this post: According to committeetoprotectbloggers.org URL shortners are blocked in Saudi Arabia. I don’t think blocking parts of the open internet are a good idea – as it’s obviously fraught with censorship issues and the internet changes too quickly for this approach to every be appropriate.

Looks like Twitter is worried about the same things: http://blog.twitter.com/2010/06/links-and-twitter-length-shouldnt.html

This summer, all links shared on Twitter.com or third-party apps will be wrapped with a t.co URL. They plan to display the links as short t.co links in SMS messages, and a longer form on the web etc. “to display links in a way that removes the obscurity of shortened link and lets you know where a link will take you.”

Can’t wait!

I want to invite everyone with any interest in Formula 1 to sign-up for Mitch & Brooke’s Fantasy Racing League.

It makes the races that much more fun to watch and gives you five drivers to cheer for.

My siblings and I all had our own teams last year. The inside tip is my sister’s strategy that proved to be the best of three of us was choosing drivers by hotness.

This is why I want to encourage you to sign-up this year. It’s a far better experience when you know the “owner” of the other teams racing against you because the excitement of the race doesn’t end with the chequered flag, but when you find out how your fantasy team did — well in my case, that’s when it ended. You may do well!

Mitch & Brooke’s Fantasy Racing League just opened up registration for this year. If you can look past the web 0.9 appearance of the site I promise you’ll enjoy the experience: www.fantasyautoracers.com/f1_01/

My old 2001 Acura EL had a list of problems that were only getting worse and had to do with its 236,500 km plus age. So it was time to upgrade!

My wife Lindsay and I had three cars on our list, all used cars in that 3 to 4 year old or 40,000 km to 70,000 km range that generally defines the off-lease market — and they all needed to have a helping of sportiness and quirkiness.

All manual, all with a high level of trim.

The cars on our list were:

1. The Mazda 3 Sport (wagon), as a sporty car with good use of space.
2. SAAB 9-3, as it represented a bit of bargon given the companies current predicament. I even wrote into the AutoBlog podcast about my idea. It’s the very last thing they talk about at 1 hour, 28 minutes – they read the year wrong, but they don’t like the Saab manual either)
3. Acura CSX, the Canada-only Super Civic that replace my EL in the lineup
4. … maybe a compelling Honda Civic, Fit, or a Suburu could have squeezed in there, but probably not.

I consider buying a used car “family policy”, as I don’t want to pay for that initial depreciation, but I do want all of that high cost kit. I’m quite willing to diagnose the faults off a range of used cars from across Ontario and ride around like the Princess and the Pea on test drives until I find the perfect car.

Lindsay, not so much. In the end that just meant I could look at even more cars!

I settled on a 2007 Acura CSX, black with black tint, a 5spd manual and the 2.0 VTEC 155 hp engine. No leather this time (Lindsay’s happier, I’m not so much, but warming to not having leather).

I like the car a lot, but even though I have an AUX (headphone jack) input on the new CSX, I really do miss the after-market adaptor my old EL had to let me control the iPod (iPhone) from the regular car stereo.

In 2007 I created a web site to designed to help everyone, principally me, track your luck with the Tim Horton’sâ„¢ roll-up promotion and let users share their experience with others.

Today Rim Count has been shut down. The site required a little bit of work to update the content for 2010, but more than that, it needed a way for people to access the site beyond the web and e-mail; perhaps a mobile app or Facebook app. Most of all, it was to be a success, it needs more than zero marketing.

That’s not going to happen.

It was a good way to learn the Drupal platform, and I recommend it to anyone building a site with content that’s more than reverse chronological posts. Mission accomplished. Now it’s time to close up shop.