Making It Short and Nice: niceURL.me

Before I even start talking about niceURL I want to say that YES, I know there are a lot of URL shortening services around. And yes, I know that at first sight there is no point in using it! But please, read on... and at the end you might think the exact opposite!

Having said that, we can move on to the juicy part.

Yes. This is a project I've been developing. And yes, at the moment it is quite primitive. As it just takes a long and/or ugly URL and turns it into a short and much more appealing one. But that's it at the moment. Hmm...wait! Have you looked at the badge next to the logo? No? Than take a look. Do it now, it's right here. I think you got the point!

Now...why would anyone build an URL shortener instead of using one of the many already available? Simple. Because niceURL is not just an URL shortener, at least not for long. Version 0.2 is coming a lot sooner than you think and it brings some much desired functionality. Functionality that you can't find on any other URL shortener and that every power-user wants. And when I say power-user I don't refer to a maniac that wants to shorten URLs all day long. I'm talking about someone that uses a microbloging platform quite often and that wants to be able to post links that are the shortest and look the best. And wants to do it fast and easy!

With all the respect for TinyURL, SnipURL, Bit.ly and many other huge URL shorteners, I hate using them. Their UI and UX suck. TinyURL looks and SnipURL and Bit.ly manage to flood the main page with a lot of non-sense. I don't get why SnipURL calls "Vital stats" the number of URLs they have shortened! That number won't save my life and I can easily live without knowing it. I would be more than happy if they moved it to a separate page if they really feel the need for an ego-boost.

With all this in mind and while, i admit, looking at the Google homepage I realized that is what I missed when it came to URL shorteners! A page with just a logo and a box to "drop" my long and nasty URL in. That's it. That is how niceURL's interface was born. And that is the principle I promise I'll support throughout this whole project.

All in all, today niceURL is a good-looking, super-accessible. But it might be a lot more in a matter of days. You'll just have to keep an eye open!

Oh, almost forgot. One really nice advantage of niceURL is that it makes a plain 301 redirect to your original URL so you will not be losing all that link juice you are getting through the sites where you post the shortened URL! ;-)

TwitColors.com

UPDATE: Great news for designers! TwitColors now allows you to download a certain user's color scheme in .ACO format. You can find the download link below the user's color listing.

A few days ago I made a blog post stating that I'm working on a bunch of projects that I really hope to get online asap. Well, I have a good news for both you and me. One of them is online.

The project I'm talking about now is TwitColors, a new way to explore Twitter from a colorful perspective.

It basically analyzes the Twitter profile image of a given person and brakes it to up to 10 unique colors which are then matched to a database of thousands of already discovered colors and Twitter users and generates it's color scheme as well as tops for the most and least used colors in profile images among different tweeps.

Example color schemes: http://twitcolors.com/encu, http://twitcolors.com/loic

But enough with the talk. Go and check it out at http://twitcolors.com