Mike Keliher on Short URL Trust

“When you see a TinyURL, you have no idea what the link is going to point you to. Viruses, spyware, porn and all sorts of other unwanted or inappropriate stuff are just a click away. …what if you actually could trust a shortened URL?….The need for safety and security online will not go away. Don’t worry: Smart people like Garrick will be here to help.” – Mike Keliher

Thanks Mike.

Culld.us is the URL shortening system powering grv.me & minnpo.st (and others). Drop me a line if you’d like to hear more about how it integrates with your existing online publications.

Cull.us: Branded URL Shortener with Google Analytics, CNAME, and .htaccess

One of the biggest problems with URL shorteners – aside from being needed at all – is it’s not easy to move from one to another without breaking all the previous links.

Culld.us hopes to change all that.

  • Use Your Own Domain Name
    At Culld.us, you get a subdomain – like grv.culld.us – and just point a CNAME record to it from your domain.
  • Use Your Own Web Analytics
    Put the statistics on your short URLs in your existing web analytics package, whether it be Google Analytics or another package, just paste the tracking code in your subdomain’s settings.
  • .htaccess and archival feeds
    If you want to leave Culld.us, you can take your redirects with you. Anytime you want – you can grab the .htaccess file, containing your shortened urls and the webpages they redirect to, and upload to your own server.
    You can also grab the RSS or JSON feeds.
  • Fully Customized Stylesheet
    Anything you can change in CSS can be changed in your Culld.us subdomain.
  • Collaborative
    Anyone you authorize has access to add URLs to your Culld.us subdomain. Everyone gets their own login and API tokens.

Labor Day: Celebrating Opportunity

“Isn’t it sad that we have a job where we spend two 2 weeks avoiding the stuff we have to do fifty week a year?” – Seth Godin, Tribes

Almost 15 years ago now, a fellow student at the German design school I was attending, purchased a run-down flat. When he wasn’t focused his design degree – he was renovating the flat. With school Monday through Friday – his core renovation days were the weekend.

Well, Saturday.

The neighbors would complain if he used power tools on Sunday.

At the time, I was also surprised by the number of unfamiliar public holidays
German shopkeepers observed. Their frequency caught me unprepared more than a couple of times. While closed can be a cultural benefit – having the option to be open for business is a competitive advantage.

Here in the States, 12.4% of the workforce – 16.1 million people – belong to a union.

Over the past 24 years as union membership has dropped by a 1/3, real compensation has risen by 1/3.

union membership vs real compensation

“The problem with unions is not all that dissimilar to that posed by entrenched management: Once they win comfortable contracts, they often become impediments to the kind of innovation and flexibility essential to success in today’s economy.” – Wall Street Journal, Opinion, Sept 29, 2007

This Labor Day – as an entire family – we headed to the mall to purchase some new school shoes for the kids. On the way home we grabbed a soup and some sandwiches. The stores were open and the shopkeepers were as eager to help as any other Monday. If I understand U.S. labor laws correctly – everyone working today did so – by choice. Their employer provided them the opportunity and they took advantage of it.

Maybe their politics don’t mesh with organized labor. Maybe they were still protesting the outcome of the Pullman Strike. Maybe they find it ironic. I suspect for the vast majority of them – the additional dollars were more valuable than non-work-related plans.

Yes, I did some client work while the kids were napping, and will continue after I finish this post and clean up the dinner dishes.

The ability for a single individual to make the decision to work on Labor Day is why the U.S. is still the land of opportunity.

auth via params API Access with Authlogic

Authlogic, my current favorite Ruby-based authentication library and I were in a fight the last couple of days.

I was trying to add token-based, auth_via_params, authentication (vs. login and password) to a project – but Authlogic and I weren’t agreeing on how it should be done.

I had assumed:

@person_session = PersonSession.new(single_access_token => params[:token] )
@person_session.save

Instead Authlogic wanted me to give it a Person first.

@person_session = PersonSession.new(Person.find_by_single_access_token(params[:token]))
@person_session.save

Culld.Us – URL Shortening Reimagined

We don’t shorten URLs just to shorten them.

We shorten them for the same reason big box retailers sell flat-pack furniture – greater confidence during transport.

With that in mind, I’ve completely rebuilt Cullect’s URL Shortener1 – http://culld.us

It’s still custom brand-able. In a way I’m much happier with than in the previous version – just point your domain at your Culld.us subdomain.

The part I’m very excited about – it flips shortening on it’s ear.

Sure – you can shorten a URL in Culld.us and share it with a comment in Twitter or email or wherever…or you can just leave it in Culld.us.

Think microblogging + url shortening.

1. This is the first step in a complete rebuild of Cullect as a whole.

A CraigsList Re-Design Challenge

Many in the web design community re-designing CraigsList.org since it launched [1, 2].

Each one of these efforts feels like missing the part that makes CraigsList special to me – it’s the simplest thing that could possibly work.

Anything more – while perhaps adding value – absolutely adds overhead.

If only in the number of decisions that need to be made, communicated, and maintained.

“If most people are good and their needs are simple, all you have to do to serve them well is build a minimal infrastructure allowing them to get together and work things out for themselves. Any additional features are almost certainly superfluous and could even be damaging.” – Craig Newmark

Seems to me if a designer wanted to get their CraigsList re-design recommendation implemented – they’d find a couple superfluous things in the existing site and kill them.

Who’s up for the challenge?

Rails Cookie Settings for Cross-Subdomain Sessions

For the past day, I’ve been tracking down a hair-pulling-ly frustrating bug in Rails ( with Authlogic on Passenger).

My sessions weren’t sticking in production

Cross-domain or otherwise (doubly frustrating because a) Authlogic has been so rock solid for me otherwise, b) worked as expected in development).

Turns out, I wasn’t setting the session domain correctly in environments/production.rb.

config.action_controller.session[:domain] = '.YOURDOMAIN.COM'

Note the dot (it’s there for subdomains). Oh, and be sure to correctly spell your domain name…or sessions won’t work at all. 😉

Countdown to Dow 10k

Yesterday, I was asked if I’m still holding my Dow 10k by Labor Day prediction – considering it now means at least a 60 point gain for the next 11 trading days.

Yes, for 2 reasons.

First, my original prediction factored in a 75-point daily shift.

Second, Conference Board’s Aug 20 Leading Economic Indicator report came out today [pdf] citing a 0.6% increase (oh sure, I called 0.7% a couple weeks back).

“the six-month growth rate in the index has accelerated to its highest rate since the middle of 2004”

“the 3.78% four-month increase in the Leading Index from March (97.9) to July (101.6) 2009 is the largest percentage increase in the LEI for a four-month period since the 4.15% increase from October 2001 to February 2002 at the tail end of the 2001 recession. ” – Mark J Perry