LifeHack: Abuse Tinyurl for Any Info

Submitted by tomo on January 5, 2011 - 9:08pm

Here's a trick for storing and compressing information in a pinch.

Let's say you have an address or a set of directions or maybe a shopping list.

Example: "Calle de la Magdalena N8, 5D Floor, Madrid, Spain 28012"

Stick it into http://bit.ly but prepend "http://" to the text, to make it look like a URL: "http://Calle de la Magdalena N8, 5D Floor, Madrid, Spain 28012 "

When we go to the resulting shortened URL http://bit.ly/dL9MXS we get an error, but Chrome displays back:
"Oops! Google Chrome could not find calle de la magdalena n8, 5d floor, madrid, spain 28012" and voila! we have the text we wanted.

All we have to write on our hands, remember, or pass around via text message is the string "dL9MXS". It takes less work than using a pastebin and the resulting URL is shorter anyways.

Any other practical uses for this trick? Leave a comment!

January 7, 2011 - 5:02am
#2
tomo

Grover, that works great too! Sometimes it's more than you need, other times you only need a line or two of text.

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January 6, 2011 - 12:23pm
#3
Thomas Grové (not verified)

How about this instead? Enter the address into Google Maps and then bit.ly the result of that:
http://bit.ly/hTFRvk

Now you not only have the address, but it's location and possibly street view too.

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