What URL Shortener / Cloaker Service Do You Use Most?

Question

There are alot of these URL Cloaker Services out there and I was wondering which one you use most?

Answer 1

I don't use a "service" per se' but I do have a couple of small programs that I use.

They are named PeerGuardian, and JAP

Both are searchable and available from: http://www.download.com

Hope this helps to answer your question.

Answer 2

MarbleMover explained it really well. I would just add this: You are correct that there can't be a different 20-character URL for every different 100-character URL. That is known as the pigeonhole principle (as you may already know). What you are missing is that the vast majority of the possible 100 character URLs simply aren't used. Even if a URL could only contain (latin) letters and numbers, that would be 36^100 possible URLS. I think that even if every atom in the universe had a URL, there would still be quite a few left. Shortening works because the set of long URLs is very sparse.

Answer 3

Use Yahoo Widgets. Here is the link for the widget.
http://widgets.yahoo.com/gallery/view.php?widget=41918