Dealing with Long URLs and Big Files

Today I just want to share two useful online tools that I use to deal with large things. The first is to deal with long URLs. Sometimes, when you copy-paste a URL to a friend, it ends up being really long and depending on the editor, it can wrap in such a way that it breaks into two lines and is no longer a simple URL to copy-paste or click. It can also be too long to send in certain character limited fields. To solve this problem, I use TinyURL. I probably use TinyURL more than any other simple web tool there is out there. When I first started using Twitter, I was so pleased to see that it automatically converted links using TinyURL, which I was already a big fan of. It will create a permanent link to your URL, shortening your URL by dozens of characters. For example, the long form of this post is: http://www.robojenny.com/2008/07/dealing-with-long-urls-and-big-files.html. I inputted it into TinyURL and got: http://tinyurl.com/5r4x68, which is 49 characters shorter. Unsure of a TinyURL that you received and you want to make sure it's not a site that will install viruses onto your computer? Go to http://preview.tinyurl.com/ to check what the link points to.

Another useful webtool I use frequently is YouSendIt. YouSendIt solves the problem of trying to upload and send large files via e-mail or using FTPs. With a free account, you can send files up to 100MB. YouSendIt will e-mail a link to your friend(s) to download your file. With a paid account, you can send multiple files up to 2GB each, track who has downloaded your files, get a dropbox page where other people can leave you files, and more. There are also corporate and business accounts for purchase. A free trial is available for any of the three types of paid accounts, though I personally find the free lite account to be enough for my needs.