ThnLnk Blog

I think Skreemr is a good idea. I’m pretty sure it’s just an interface to a Google MP3 search query, but still it makes life easier because it provides data about the MP3 such as title, artist, bitrate, etc.The problem is that the simple search is too simple. What I’m usually looking for–for informational purposes only–is what MP3s exist for a specific artist. I don’t want samples, so the songs should generally be over 1 minute in length. And I don’t want a crappy bitrate, at least 128.

So let’s hack the URL and throw it into a ThnLnk app so that all I have to do is type out this URL, and I get what I want:

http://thnlnk.com/sa/the brunettes

(”sa” is “Skreemr artist.” “sk” also works.)

It’s really that easy.

So I got an e-mail about a local restaurant, so I go to the web page, and there’s an address but no map. Easy schmeezy. Copy and paste the address, type out “thnlnk.com/mp/” and then paste the address in, and there ya go, a Google Map!

http://thnlnk.com/mp/150 Highland Avenue, Somerville Ma

It’s really that easy.

Just a very quick, simple tool to access some data about how your ThnLnks are being used.

Go here:http://thnlnk.com/stats.php

Enter your ThnLnk and you’ll get the number of times it’s been accessed and then a list of all the times it’s been clicked with an attempt at figuring out the referrer. 

I changed the ThnLnk “apps” interface to be a little more robust:

http://thnlnk.com/[app]/[query]

So, for example:

http://thnlnk.com/mv/02110

http://thnlnk.com/mv/Somerville, MA

Other official apps:

• mp  - Google Maps
• tr - Google Maps with traffic overlay
• we - Weather.com on an hour-by-hour basis
• ye - Yelp.com look-ups by restaurant name (to your default city)
• rv - USPS reverse zip code look-up, i.e., find what cities/towns are in what zip code
• sa - Skreemr MP3 search by artist name (at least 1 min. in length, 128 bitrat)

Hm. I started with a one character code (e.g., m for maps, t for traffic, w for weather), but then realized that doesn’t scale. I moved to the current two character code. Should I go up to three characters instead, e.g., map for maps, tra for traffic, rev for reverse?

Oh, so I just wrote that some updates would be in the “future,” but it looks like the future is now. Ever wake up in the morning and you want to check the weather or traffic in your neighborhood? You *could* bookmark Weather.com or Google Maps, or keep them in del.icio.us, or go to the web sites and look them up… Or you could use ThnLnk’s “API.” (I use “API” in quotes because it’s not a super-special, technical, overhead-heavy, hard to use “real” programming API. (Though technically, it *is* an API.))

http://thnlnk.com/w02140

This URL brings up the weather (”w”) for my zip code (”02140″). Ta-da! It’s not super-complicated, but it just might make a few peoples’ lives a little bit easier–including mine, which is important to me.

Other shortcuts—I leave those up to you to decipher:

http://thnlnk.com/m02138

http://thnlnk.com/t02210

http://thnlnk.com/c02140 

Let me know in the comments if there’s anything else that you’d like to see!

Updates:

1. Removed repetitious periods in the ThnLnk.
2. Added text box for easier click-selection in Safari.
3. Cleaned up code a little bit.

Keep an eye out for: 

1. Auto-select and copy from the text box.
2. Easy access to weather and maps via very simple, user-friendly “API.” 

From lascribe:

Since last year, Transport for London has been running a series of posters aiming at improving passengers’ behaviour. To soften the underlying stern injunctions (”Don’t push!”, “Don’t block the closing doors to squeeze in at the last moment!”, “Keep your music volume down!”, “Don’t eat smelly or drippy food on the Tube!”), the designers have added graphical elements to the lettering — playing with fonts, molding the typography into cute little signs: the dripping fat from a portion of fries, the sound waves emanating from an iPod.

The sign the post displays says: “D*n’t t@ke !t out on our staff.” So it uses punctuation to soften the blow of the message, but also analogizes it to cussing us out. Kind of passive aggressive, don’t you think?

Note on ThnLnk du Moment: Occasionally, when a ThnLnk pops up on our radar screen that we think is interesting, we’re going to post it up and talk a little about it. Don’t worry; we’re not explicitly tracking everyone’s ThnLnks. Our spam filters are suspicious of the more “popular” ThnLnks, and therefore brings to our attention what’s being brought to everyone else’s attentions.

Also: We’re working on some more robust features for the service. So, stay tuned on that as well!

So not only do ThnLnks work semantically:

http://thnlnk.com/metacritic/The.Best.Books.of.2006/998

And just purely as a moderated shortened URL:

http://thnlnk.com/metacritic/082407/0000003054

(The web site domain “metacritic” and the date of ThnLnk creation (August 24, 2007).)

But now you can remove the padding from the unique ID:

http://thnlnk.com/metacritic/082407/3054

Or at the shortest it can be:

http://thnlnk.com/metacritic/3054

Not too shabby, eh? I think I might make this the default format from now on, as well.

So up until now every ThnLnk had a unique identifier tagged onto the end of the URL so that ThnLnks don’t get “clobbered.” But I came to and remembered that they need to semantically useful–which also means that you should be able to read a ThnLnk to someone else.

If you mix upper- and lower-case letters and numbers, it’s hard to read the URL to another person. So now, I’m going to reduce all the unique tags to *just numbers*. I think that makes me comfortable enough that ThnLnks won’t get clobbered at the creation. I’m skating close to the line here, but we have to make human decisions in a non-perfect world.

It’s not perfect–and I have to keep on working on this, but:

http://thnlnk.com/yahoo/Bulldog.Beagle.Training.Question/392

Will read: “thinlink dot com - no i’s - slash yahoo slash Bulldog dot Beagle dot Training dot Question - slash 3 - 9 - 2.”

(Also note that the words, e.g., “bulldog,” don’t need to be capitalized. Lowercase is OK.)

I cleaned up about 100 lines of code, which should make things a *little* bit faster. Mostly housekeeping, not much in the way of actual optimization.

I also implemented some more spam control, allowing ThnLnk to ban IPs and to monitor ThnLnks that are being used at a suspiciously high rate.