urls

TinyURL Generator is a new experimental Firefox extension that makes it easier to grab a TinyURL of whatever page you're on. Once installed it will automatically create and save a smaller, shorter URL from TinyURL.com when new pages are visited. The TinyURL is then copied to your clipboard for easy copying and pasting in an e-mail or IM conversation.

For frequent TinyURL users this might be a better route than using one of the many available bookmarklets since it saves you a click and a copy/paste. On the flip side, it doesn't work so well when … Read more

There are far too many domain search and purchasing tools, but I haven't found one that does it like Domain Pigeon. The service tracks domains that are still available and puts them in an index that can be searched and sorted in all manner of ways.

Domain Pigeon's secret sauce, however, is that it shows you what other users have been looking at, right down to how many have clicked on any specific domain name. Domains that have gotten more attention darken in color, with the heavy hitters bubbling up to the top.

To encourage registration (which costs … Read more

If you're looking to share an MP3 with a friend, or with a bunch of other folks on Twitter, worth checking out is Songly. The service takes the URL of any MP3 that's hosted on the Web and will both shorten it for micropublishing tools like Twitter, as well as package it in a slick little Flash player. This is especially useful since your recipient can play it back without having to download it first.

Compared to TinySong, which we looked at back in June, the big benefit here is that you're not limited to a catalog … Read more

In a world of instant gratification--faster loading speeds, quicker navigation, hot key combinations, and so on--who likes to wait for a browser to launch and then navigate from a home page to the Web site you really want to visit? This nifty little add-on will help remove these speed bumps from your surfing.

MuvEnum Address Bar (the name doesn't roll effortlessly off the tongue, but it's the result that counts) installs a URL address field and Go button to your system tray. It launches when you boot, so it's there even before you open a browser, ready … Read more

Play like a hacker with the all too easy to use Denial of Service testing tool. DoSHTTP's pull-down menus and button interface takes only a few seconds to understand. Even those who only slightly understand Denial of Service floods can operate this tool. In other words, though it may be designed for professionals to test performance and protection software it can be used for the wrong reasons. That's probably why the demo is severely limited to four tests and a maximum of 5,000 DoS requests per session.

Warning aside, this is a dead simple tool for professionals. … Read more

Developers continue to push the envelope on iPhone application development, skirting the bounds of Apple's development guidelines and discovering means for implementing undocumented, pioneering functionality. The latest breakthrough comes from Innerfence software, and is best described by its author: "Go somewhere; do something; come back."

Most iPhone applications offer a one-way street when it comes to accessing other applications' functionality. Click on a URL in Mail, for instance, and you are transported to Safari. In order to get back to Safari though, you need to click the home button then tap the Safari icon again. In other … Read more

Despite my fondness for customizable start pages (Netvibes, iGoogle, My Yahoo, etc.), I have found myself continuing to use PopUrls, a pre-built aggregation page that's almost as useful as a customizable page.

Unlike other start pages, PopUrls is not general-purpose like iGoogle or My Yahoo. It is an aggregation site for dweebs, with a focus, by default, on tech-friendly user aggregation sites Digg, Delicious, and Reddit. It does, to be fair, grab headlines from The New York Times and Google News, but also does so from Slashdot and Wired. A top content section aggregates the popularity of PopUrls items … Read more

Updated September 12 at 11:12 a.m. with comment from Adobe.

Certain URLs can cause Adobe Acrobat 9 to suffer a denial of service or crash, says a researcher.

According to an alert from the SecuriTeam mailing list, "a vulnerability in Adobe Acrobat 9 allow attackers to cause the program to crash by providing it with a malformed URL."

The alert cites a blog by researcher Jeremy Brown, who provides working exploit code. In one example, Brown uses the string "acroie:///DoS" to cause a DoS in Adobe Acrobat 9 running on Windows Vista.

A … Read more

Thanks to the restriction on the length of posts in nanoblog services like Twitter, the world needs URL shortening services like TinyURL and similar sites. The shortening services are free, though. So one has to ask, how do they make money? And where's my cut?

There are (at least) two URL shorteners that are ad-supported. Not only do they have a revenue model, but they share their revenues with people who use them.

The new kid on the block here is Adjix. Like TinyURL, it creates short links. But the pages users get directed to get a small ad … Read more