Show HN: URL Shortener Optimized for QR Code | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: URL Shortener Optimized for QR Code

ku.ag

52 pointsrmedaer41 comments

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What makes it "optimized for QR codes"?

It generates the smallest QR Code possible (Version 1; size 21×21).

Other URL shorteners generates bigger QR code (usually version 2 or 3)

Bit.ly code: https://bit.ly/3l9tI3w (8 + 7 + 7 = 22 chars)

Ku.ag code: https://ku.ag/t002te0h.y-e (8 + 6 + 12 = 26 chars)

Every string encodes to the same amount of “squares” in a QR code, so I see no reason to use your service.

> Every string encodes to the same amount of “squares” (...)

Actually the size of QR Code doesn't depend only on length of the string but also on charset used.

For instance, the URLs generated at bit.ly are case sensitive, to encode the qr code you have to use "binary" input mode.

For KUAG I'm using "Alphanumeric" input mode, it reduces the size of the QR code I'm generating however I restricted to a smaller subset of character.

I understand it looks like a paradox; but a bit.ly shortened url leads to a bigger QR code than KUAG (even if the string is longer)

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code#Storage for more details.

Note: the shortened url I display is 'lowered' for esthetical reason.

Edit: I forgot to mention the error-correction. But I don't think it's fair compare with other shorteners if they are not using the same error-correction level.

Oh, fair point, now it makes sense and I see value in your product!

> Every string encodes to the same amount of “squares” in a QR code

That's not correct. QR codes have redundant pixels, and you can choose how much redundancy you want.

That said, the default in most generators is the least amount of redundancy.

Every content byte encodes to the same amount of squares. Error correction bytes are “appended”. The point about every string being equal in the same configuration of a QR code still applies. As such, the shorter URL, the better.

Not every string uses the same amount of content bits per character.

If you use only numbers you use 3 1/2 bit per character, if you use only numbers, uppercase letters and some limited punctuation it’s 5 1/2 bits per character. Otherwise it’s 8 bits per character but that’s a waste because most of the characters you can then represent can’t be used in a URL.

I wonder if Google will introduce something stupid like an emoji that means https:// , that will start showing up on Chrome and be recognised by their QR Code scanner..

Oh never mind, they're going to kill the address bar instead. Next they should just introduce an emoji that means "Search for this on Google:"...

I wonder what the minimum necessary text is for recognising a link in QR code apps, the one built into my camera won't notice that some text that says facebook.com is a link, but the one in google lens app will.

You were downvoted, but that question is the interesting thing about this. It'd be nice to know a little about how it works.

Would you be interested to read a blog post about how it works?

I consider to write a few articles about each part of the project... if there are people to read them! ;-)

I am fairly content with your reply here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24691042

But I am one of the people who would read a blog post elaborating further if that's something you chose to write. :)

Hi. Are you generating revenue from this? If not, please consider having an enterprise offering.

There are companies that are interested in this. We built something for a major company to send unique links to a customer base of 20+ million. They were blasting SMS offers and we helped them infer customer traits for next best offer, generate links, and send SMS using a template.

You can make it really appealing if you write an API for it so they can hook it to their messaging systems and blast messages programmatically.

Also, they wanted to have analytics (who clicked, from where, etc.)

If you never sold to enterprise, here is a short Twitter thread pinned to my profile[0].

Check out enterpriseready[1], too.

- [0]: https://twitter.com/jugurthahadjar/status/131066829330549965...

- [1]: https://www.enterpriseready.io

Hi Jugurtha,

Actually a REST API is already ready. I consider to offer premium services (API, link management, bulk generation, etc.)

Could you send an email to info@ku.ag in order discuss more about it ?

Kind regards,

Sent.

Confused about what makes this optimized for QR. Other shorteners such as https://t.ly/ have a shorter domain and they have an extension that allows you to shorten a url then easily share the qr code http://t.ly/extension. They also offer an api etc.

can we get an Open Source version of this so that we don't a) have to send traffic through your servers and b) hope that you keep providing the service and bandwidth indefinitely for free?

Hi masukomi.

Currently it's still a side project (started a few days). My plan included the following phases:

  1. Idea + POC (solved technical issues) => Done
  2. Build a MVP => Done
  3. Get some feedback and see if there is any interest. => Here we are!
  4. Based on feedback, add (premium) features but keep the basic service for free.

So in summary; yes it will stay free, I might add some "acceptable" limitations but the goal is indeed to propose additional (non-free) features like well-known services (for instance Gitlab).

So feel free to share your ideas, I would enjoy to answer and challenge them!

Furthermore I plan to write a small survey to get more feedback.

About the "Open Source" part: as a regular FOSS contributor, I do not exclude to publish sources. However, publishing sources means maintaining them. And I don't want to maintain a useless project. So currently I don't want to publish them.

Hope it helps you to understand my strategy for this new experience!

I mean, whatever people might pretend is true when they're lazy, you don't have to maintain anything you don't want to. If you just want to make the source public once and tell anyone who asks for bugfixes where they can stick it, that's your right.

A URL shortener is not that hard to write. At the most basic level it's one table with key = the url blob and value = the url target. There's already several hits for 'open source url shortener' in the top results there's one with MIT and one with GPLv2, and several others that don't specify their license.

This one is neat because the author chose to restrict to the qr code "alphanumeric" character set that includes a couple symbols to reduce bits per character in the encoding. Now that you're aware of that, you could certainly do that yourself or modify another shortener to do it.

Very nice, how long the shortened URL will last? Is there a limit on the length of the URL?

The shortened URL contains 25 characters. Actually it could be smaller but the goal is to generate the smallest QR code. To do so, a restricted set of characters is used. The result is a small QR code version 1.

There is currently no limitation on input URL size. However you might reach some limitation (> 4096bytes) due to the current proxy.

great job! But, you didn't answer nonsapreiche's question about how long the shortened URL will last?

Right! Currently there is no plan to remove shortened URL. Meaning that the service keep shortened URL indefinitely.

It may be interesting, but the generated URL[0] seems pretty scary to click, esp since the QR code shows the same.

[0]Do you dare? https://ku.ag/xrjl6wr8i.ye

That looks like every phishing text I receive.

Somewhat related: What ever happened with the QR Code to url shortener patent lawsuits that were going on several years ago ... 2013ish I think? Is it still risking a lawsuit to use them?

Context: https://www.paperspecs.com/caught-our-eye/beware-the-qr-code...

huh ... Seems like the patents might be expired?

https://patents.google.com/patent/US8131597 https://patents.google.com/patent/US6199048

Your service did not work as advertised. I asked for https://ku.ag/ to be shortened but it got prolonged to https://ku.ag/5q6w9v1hnp*o

Also I noticed that you generate a new link each time. Why?

Possibly to allow enterprise use, with separate stats for each shortened link.

You got the point.

I would like to thank you for your feedback. If you still have a little bit of time, here is a quick survey to get more feedback about your needs! https://ku.ag/6dmohc20fvnd

Kind regards,

Love it. I like that code is small, google lens recognized it faster then usual and site opened fast.

Kind of the code part ie. shortened url is weird and could use some humanization. But it is free, so it works for me.

Does anyone know of a (potentially hosted) shortener that supports deleting links and using your own aliases for them? Bonus points if I can use my own domain.

Hi StavrosK

I launched a URL Shortener last month that supports custom keywords, deleting links & custom domains. The default domain is a grandfathered .com emoji domain that I thought looked like a Ninja Star so I called the service Ninja Linka (marketing writes itself really).

Here's the homepage: https://ninjalinka.com

More info in the API Docs: https://ninjalinka.com/docs/1.0/home

Out of interest, what is your use case for deleting your links?

Hey dgivney! That looks quite good, thanks! Is there a trial so I can try it out for a few days? It looks like I need to pay to even try the UI.

Also, the star domain is interesting, but you may want to have an alternative as well. I usually use the links so I can type them on other people's computers to get access to my Dropbox, and hunting for an emoji on a computer is rather inconvenient...

I want to delete the links mostly for tidiness, but I also need to edit them because I sometimes want to change where they point to (to different folders in my Dropbox, etc).

Interesting use case, I see. You can use the URL shortener on the homepage to create links but yes, the custom keywords, custom domains and link analytics require a small one-off payment for personal use. I did this thinking it will prevent spam but I understand it's probably important - I will create some trail accounts and send you one this weekend.

Thanks!

Try rebrandly.com. I don't know what the pricing is like on the paid plans, but they have a free tier to try it out and I think it does all of the things you asked about.

nice product and clean UI/UX - only part I don't love are the special chars in the URL. Browsers might be ok with it but people sometimes read URLs aloud over the phone or in person and could be easily misconstrued.

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