| Home > Of things Mac > iWeb: what's with the l-o-n-g URLs, Apple? Time to offer an integrated short url generator before we get to Version 2, no? |
| iWeb: what's with the l-o-n-g URLs, Apple? Time to offer an integrated short url generator before we get to Version 2, no? | | Date Created: 10 Feb, 2006, 10:53 PM |
 I've been playing with iLife 06 for a few weeks now, and it is a solid improvement in what was already a fine stable of applications, the equivalent of which is not found on another platform.
Garageband 3 is the big improver, bringing with it a host of new features with special emphasis on podcasting, as I had hoped for and predicted since podcasting took off around August 2004.
iMovie too is looking more professional with its new look and layout, although today as I was editing a video I saw some strange anomalies. Clips I had trashed re-appeared and took the place of new clips I wanted to edit, and while I heard sound on some clips, their video was blacked out. Very strange.
iWeb is the new kid on the block, and in version 1.0 holds lots of promise. Tightly integrated with the Apple service so many people love to hate, or are simply flumoxed by - .Mac - it allows for the creativity elicited in some of the iLife apps to have a home where they can be shared with others.
Principally aimed at a domestic market, it has taken some clever hacks to make its blog capabilities extend beyond the embarassingly small-minded, allowing comments to be added as well as ads to help pay for .Mac. Blogging didn't start with comments either, but now that comments - even with haloscan as an add-on - are seen as an integral and occasional more interesting aspects of the blogging experience as both writer and reader, it seems petty for Apple to not integrate such a feature.
For instance, I am experimenting with a blog in iWeb using its password feature, so as to share a training program with those not able to attend, but where the contents are not for public consumption (sorry!)
It would be great if the intended readership - all eight of them - could add their comments, ask questions, and make suggestions. As it now stands, they must email me and the others via Cc and the comments are not part of the record unless I work double-time to cut-and-paste them - not a very Apple-like solution.
But there is one very large stumbling block which is extremely unApple-like. I have seen this block - and so have you - via this blog, created using Blogwavestudio (seemingly out of business, by the way) as well as those blogs created by one-time .Mac freebie, iBlog, from Lifli software. Both orginate on the Asian subcontinent, in Korea and India respectively.
The block is the URLs each blog software generates. So, my entry for my treatise on how Apple and Intel tagteamed and how it resembled professional wrestling has this URL:
http://homepage.mac.com/lesposen/blogwavestudio/LH20040807225237/LHA20060128115508/index.html
And over on my Fear of Flying blog, using iBlog, a recent entry looks like this:
http://homepage.mac.com/lesposen/iblog/B80495344/C2128971884/index.html
Looks kinda similar doesn't it?
And what of the URLs iWeb produces?
Well, behold:
http://web.mac.com/lesposen/iWeb/7BFA361E-234C-4CAB-910E-E387AA227501/Bosem%20Tsarfati.html
This is a folk dance movie page, the movie rendered in mp4, which allows me far more flexibility in describing it and annotating links and another pertinent information - a vast improvement over the superceded "homepage" setup, still available for use for those not yet using iLife 06 (but sure to be phased out eventually).
What an unwieldy alphabet soup of a URL they all are, but especially unMac like is the iWeb URL. How often is that kind of link going to be broken, unless it's contained within (which is often rejected in Comments sections which do not permit tagging)?
Apple desperately needs to emulate if not purchase the shortened URLs services many people now use. Long URLs appear in many places on the web, especially newspapers' websites.
By the way, you know how some Welsh cities have extremely long, utterly unpronouncable names? Well, of course, websites which utilise them will also have the world's longest domain names won't they?
Try this: www.llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.com
And the world's longest URL? Open to conjecture, but a Google search suggests this.
Of course, Mapquest seems to delight in forging incredibly long URLs which sorely test the limits.
This for instance, links to a map of Minneapolis!
http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?ovi=1&mqma
p.x=300&mqmap.y=75&mapdata=%252bKZmeiIh6N%252bI
gpXRP3bylMaN0O4z8OOUkZWYe7NRH6ldDN96YFTIUmSH3Q6
OzE5XVqcuc5zb%252fY5wy1MZwTnT2pu%252bNMjOjsHjvN
lygTRMzqazPStrN%252f1YzA0oWEWLwkHdhVHeG9sG6cMrf
XNJKHY6fML4o6Nb0SeQm75ET9jAjKelrmqBCNta%252bsKC
9n8jslz%252fo188N4g3BvAJYuzx8J8r%252f1fPFWkPYg%
252bT9Su5KoQ9YpNSj%252bmo0h0aEK%252bofj3f6vCP
So, there is clearly a need for a URL-shortening service!
Already several exist, such as Shorturl, metamark, smartredirect, maketiny, Ink.in, and one of the originals, tinyurl, amongst just a few. (A paid service, macurl.com also exists).
Apple needs its own short URL service which automatically generates a link for iWeb homepages which both connotes the content, as well as it being a .mac service.
What about iweburl.com/lesposen/xx as an example?
or macweburl.com/lesposen/xx?
Or something else original...
Whatever cleverness Apple can come up with, it must surely do away with these ungainly, unattractive and unhelpful system of URLs which its blog component of iWeb generates. Other blog software allow bloggers to offer their own naming conventions that better clues the searcher or reader into the content of the blog entry, while still revealing the name of the software itself.
Let's see what Apple can come up with if enough users make the request via the usual discussion forums. |
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