Orangeinks

Shrinkify: Produce Shorter URLs Using Firefox

Shrinkify is a URL shortening web tool similar to TinyURL and FuseURL. Basically, all of the mentioned URL shrinking tools pretty much does the same thing but with some differences in their approach on shortening URLs. TinyURL, the most popular among three now provides a preview mode for its generated tiny URL. FuseURL however made a different approach by letting users to fuse together several URLs and create a single short URL for easy sharing of multiple sites. So what’s special about Shrinkify? It shrinks better.

Aside from making long URLs short, Shrinkify also provides you with an option of choosing an even shorter URL. They said that it is for people who are very much concerned with the number of bytes they spend on a URL. Below are the examples of the shrunk URL which are produced by Shrinkify.

Short URL:
http://shrinkify.com/7qk

Shorter URL:
http://s7y.us/7qk

Besides producing shorter URLs, Shrinkify’s main features include OS-X desktop, Firefox browser and iGoogle integration. The mentioned features will let you do the URL shrinking without actually going to the Shrinkify website and paste a long URL to make it shorter. You can do it in your Firefox Browser by downloading the Shrinkify Firefox Add-on. They also have a Mac OS-X dashboard widget and a gadget for iGoogle.

Tags: Firefox, firefox add-on, igoogle gadget, os-x dashboard, short url, shrinkify, URL, widget

A Bittorrent Multi Search Engine

Are you tired of switching from different torrent sites just to find the Bittorrent file that you are looking for? Sometimes you even have to open multiple torrent sites on different tabs of your browser just to see if even one of them will return the result that you need. If all this work is bothering you and want a solution for this then maybe you check out LookTorrent.

LookTorrent is a Bittorrent multi search engine where you can do your torrent searches and browsing in a single page. What it actually does is it gathers your search keyword and compares it with the other Torrent sites then it returns a list of torrent sites where your keyword made a positive match. LookTorrent is not a Bittorrent aggregator and it does not display the results in its pages. It just tells you the possible bit torrent sites you can visit to download the torrent file that you are looking for by loading the original torrent site within its page. This makes it easy for the user to switch from different torrent sites to see each respective torrent search results from within LookTorrent.

Tags: bittorrent, look torrent, looktorrent, search-engine, torrent

YouTomb: Where Copyrighted YouTube Videos Rests in Peace

YouTomb is a website created by MIT Free Culture (a student organization in MIT) that tracks videos taken down from YouTube for alleged copyright violation. We all know that there is a very large amount of videos currently uploaded in YouTube that violates copyright laws. Some of them we never got to see because they have been taken down almost instantly after hitting the YouTube pages while some are taken down after gaining popularity and the original content owner decides to pull the plug.

YouTomb catalogs most of the popular videos which are already taken down. If you are thinking that you can watch the videos in YouTomb then you are mistaken, screen shots of the video and information about the takedown is as close as you can get to the buried videos. If that is the case then you may be wondering what the point is. Ever since YouTube decided to automate its takedown process for copyrighted audios and videos, MIT Free Culture became interested on how the YouTube takedown algorithm works. The goal of this project is to identify how YouTube recognizes potential copyright violations as well as to aggregate mistakes made by the algorithm. Basically, anyone can file a DMCA takedown notification at any time that cause YouTube to immediately remove alleged infringing content. If the algorithm makes a mistake then this will usually cause inconvenience to the person submitting the video and the users of YouTube.

How the YouTube takedown algorithm works as explained by the MIT Free Culture Team:

Many rights holders believe that videos uploaded to YouTube damage their business or income stream. As such, rights holders can submit their works to a database of copyrighted work to be fingerprinted. Whenever YouTube’s automated system finds a matching fingerprint (or part of the fingerprint), it notifies the rights holder. At that point, the rights holder can optionally take down the video.

Since YouTube is the most popular video hosting site in the internet, it is good to know that there is a group like MIT Free Culture who takes interest in keeping tabs and constantly checking system faults. This will provide information for developing better systems and algorithms for startups and existing web services.

Tags: algorithm, copyright, copyright infingement, MIT, MIT Free Culture, you tomb, You Tube

Download YouTube Videos Using ExtractYouTube

ExtractYouTube is a simple YouTube Video search and download website. You can use their site to search for YouTube videos that you want to download or just paste the URL of the YouTube video in their search bar to begin the download immediately. There are other websites that offer the same service plus format conversion. The only thing is that most of them are slow and fails in the process of conversion.

ExtractYouTube is simple fast and readily available for use in any browser. If you want to convert the video into another format, there are lots of websites out there offering a fast service for this. I would recommend Media Convert for this task. It’s fast, reliable and the best part of all, it’s free. Sometimes it’s better to use a service that focuses on a particular task than use a service that offers several tasks rolled into one.

Note: You might also want to try using FreeMusicZilla for your YouTube downloads. It’s an online music stream downloader which also works on YouTube and other video streaming sites.

Tags: Download, extractyoutube, Free, freemusiczill, media convert, You Tube, youtube

Watch 3000 Free Live Stream TV Channels Online

OnlineTVChannels is a live streaming video aggregator which currently delivers about three thousand (3000) TV channels from more than seventy (70) different countries around the world right into your browser. There are many websites that caters a service like this one but OnlineTVChannels has the biggest collection of channels that I have ever seen.

This is a pretty cool site to bookmark. If you are too busy doing stuff in front of your computer and wants a quick break and watch some TV. People taking a vacation or working abroad can also use sites like OnlineTVChannels for viewing their local channels wherever they are in the world (as long as they have internet of course). The website supports Windows Medial Player, Flash and QuickTime plugins for their videos, so be sure to have those plugins installed for the video streams to work in your browsers. Most of the channels streams well while others are lagging. It is not clear which bandwidth is OnlineTVChannels using since they are a video aggregator site so I guess it is good to assume that the streaming speed will also depend on the original site hosting the videos. You do not have to register to start watching. Registration is only needed if you want to comment.

Tags: Entertainment, Free, live streaming, online, tv channels, tv shows, tv stream

UrTurn Pays You to Social Network

There are already a number of web services out there who are willing to pay its users for using their site. Some of them I have already covered here. There is a new player in town, the only difference is that it pays you to use different social networks. UrTurn is a social media company that offers Rewards based on your interaction in your network. They developed a reward system where you can earn points for your activity in your social network. Currently, they are supporting Facebook and MySpace along with other social networks will be added in their list sometime in the future.

How it Works (FaceBook):

The system works like most Facebook applications. Just install the UrTurn application in your FaceBook account and start inviting friends to use UrTurn. By doing this, you are already earning reward points in your UrTurn account. If you already have an account, which is more likely, you will earn points by doing what you’re already been doing ever since you joined FaceBook. Earn points by inviting friends, adding photos, blogging and doing status updates. Once you have accumulated reward points, you can trade those points for cash in the UrTurn marketplace or save it up to redeem UrTurn reward items which currently include iPhones, iPods and Visa Gift Cards. The reward points per activity are shown in the image below.

This is an interesting service which will be most appealing to heavy users of social networking sites (as of now FaceBook users). If you are a FaceBook user and wants to earn some buck for using it, check out UrTurn and start inviting your friends and earn some rewards, and if they don’t give in, you can always SuperPoke them to death.

Tags: Facebook, get paid, social media, social network, urturn