From: "F. Alfredo Rego" <[log in to unmask]>
> Thanks for the tip, John.  To avoid eye strain, try the equivalent
> http://tinyurl.com/uw7z
>
> BTW, I just sent a few words about "tiny URL" to a friend:
>
> It is a great concept (and implementation).  For info: http://tinyurl.com
>
> They provide a useful service and, in the process, they do some (subtle)
> marketing of their products.  They seem to be "cool" people (check their
> suggested links to other pages & sites).
>
> The basic idea is that they "hash" (just as IMAGE does) a [potentially]
> VERY long string into a "number" that uses a reasonably large number base
> (let's say 36, to start with, to be able to use 26 letters plus 10 decimal
> digits as the "base-36 digits"). Their "hash" algorithm appears to be
> very simple (so far).  "Simple", of course, does mean "useless" -- on the
> contrary!
>
> You can represent a gigantic number in base-36 with just a few "digits".
> They probably just increment their "current number" by one and they
> assign the new number permanently to whatever URL you submit.  When
> you click on the "tiny" URL (which goes through their web site), they
> simply redirect the link to the original link, which they promise to
> keep forever.  I wonder what kinds of statistical analysis (and user
> correlation) they do.

They do just increment the number, which means that it's _not_ a hash of the
original URL string.  They do look up URL's you submit for shortening to see
if they are already in their database, so you get the same tinyurl each
time.

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