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Comment by jccalhoun | Hacker News Reader

Mostly off topic: I would like a URL shortener that uses a similar system so that instead of giving me small.url/b3DmQ it would be small.url/MouseHatDoor because I will sometimes share a link with my students and there is always one student who can't get it to work because they type it wrong or something. I can send them the link through a course announcement but it is more convenient to put a short url on screen and have them go there.

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http://yellkey.com is designed for exactly this use case, and is near-exact clone of the now defunct http://shoutkey.com that was prevalent at our school for this. It provides single-word short URLs that expire after 24 hours, which is fine in practice for any in-person use case.

nice. I have looked for url shorteners but didn't find this one. thanks!

Might it be easier to have a web page that has a chronological or reverse chronological clickable list of links you want to give your students?

Then instead of sending them a shortened link to something, you just put the link on your page and tell them there's a new link for them there.

That would also make it easy for students who want to go back and review older links you sent. Instead of digging through prior announcements to find the right one, they could just go to your links page.

"I can send them the link through a course announcement but it is more convenient to put a short url on screen and have them go there."

I hope you will look at "Oh By Codes":

https://0x.co/

Standard URL shortening (although with no tracking or cookies or javascript) but you can also shorten non-urls.

There's a normal FAQ on the page, but also an "HN FAQ":

https://0x.co/hnfaq.html

Chrome gave me a NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID when attempting to visit https://0x.co/

You should check out our LNS system. You find the docs at http://qalocate.bamsaas.com/whitepapers

The NATO alphabet is worth learning for just these situations.

Probably not. First of all, "bravo tree uppercase delta mike uppercase quebec" isn't as memorable as "mouse hat door". Further, the NATO alphabet works because both the speaker and the listener understand what's coming. If the listener isn't familiar, then the speaker often needs to revert to "s as in sierra, k as in kilo, y as in yankee"—which tends to cause even more confusion as the listener then needs to parse the (intentionally) unusual set of words.

bitly lets you make custom URLs, even if you're not a paid customer. You can make them anything you want, so long as it hasn't been taken already.

I do that if I plan it ahead. However, sometimes it is more of a on the moment thing. Thanks though.

bit.ly generates a random string by default but will let you override it with the wording of your choice (as long as it's available).

I will do that if I plan ahead but often I will generate it on the spot so I don't bother since bit.ly wants you to log in to customize urls.

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