Google Short Links

labs_logo2I found this tip on my buddy Kyle Roche's blog this morning. It's such a great service that I had to repost it (aka rip it off).

Google has released an awesome new Labs feature called Google Short Links that allows you to easily create descriptive shortcuts to web URLs. The service (powered by App Engine!!) integrates with your Google Apps Control Panel and also the Firefox 3 "awesome bar".

For example, I created a short link to the book that Kyle and I are writing on Java App Engine: http://links.jeffdouglas.com/book

You can have both public and private shortlinks. So you might create the following short links:

  • http://work.jeffdouglas.com
  • http://family.jeffdouglas.com

Then you could make a bookmarklet to your private Flickr photos (http://family.jeffdouglas.com/myphotos) that only you can access. You might make a series of work related bookmarklets (e.g., http://work.jeffdouglas.com/myproducts, http://work.jeffdouglas.com/linkedin) that you can give out to the general public and leave scattered around the interwebs.

You can sign up for the service here.