Three (More) Bits of Tech

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote up Three Bits of Tech. Thanks to the ever fertile world of the web, I’ve got another three for you today. They may not be the sort of stuff that sets the hearts of the big firm IT teams a-flutter (though you never know), but they might just meet a need for those of us who usually act as our own IT support. See what you think.

1. / BridgeURL

The folks who bring you short URLs now offer you the chance to bundle a number of URLs together and locate them with a single link. Essentially, they’re letting you easily create and host a web page on their site that features links, though you must have an account with bit.ly to do this. It works pretty much as you imagine it might: one by one you paste the URLs into the text box on the Bundles page; then you give your collection a name and add any annotations that you wish. A final click puts the short URL for you bundle on to your clipboard. Herewith mine: . And because we increasingly want to know where we’re going before we get there, when you click on my collection link, you’ll see an excerpted preview of each of the targets for the URLs.

The same URL collection idea is offered by BridgeURL. Again, you enter as many URLs as you like and obtain a link to the collection. Here’s the link for my BridgeURL collection: http://bridgeurl.com/Posts-about-BridgeURL. What’s good about this is that the title of your collection is apparent in the URL. Of course, if you want a short URL, you’ll have to take this to Bit.ly… The downside to BridgeURL, though, as you’ll see if you follow the link, is that each of the target pages I’ve chosen is displayed in full within an iFrame in the form of a slideshow: I find this a bit clumsy, and iFrames cause some web viewing applications to choke, so BridgeURL is working to remedy the problem.

2. The Ultimate Dropbox Toolkit

Here are 30 things you can do with Dropbox, that evermore essential home in the cloud. If you already use Dropbox, you’ll be surprised at the uses you haven’t yet thought of; if you don’t use Dropbox, change your ways, is my advice. If I had to sum up what this marvellous app can do (in 30 different contexts), I’d say: backup, syncing, sharing, and version control — which is no small thing.

3. 12 Fun Hacks for Getting More out of YouTube

“Fun” and “hacks” are not words you’ll find much in a law blog. Even so, I think some of these features and mods can prove useful in a firm setting, say, for example, in training. Dragontape, for example, lets you concatenate YouTube videos into a “playlist”; Splicd, on the other hand, does the opposite, and pares things down, letting you edit a clip from a YouTube video. (By the way, I learned from the “Hacks” piece that “You can link to a specific spot in a YouTube video by adding #t=MMmSSs (replace MM with minutes and SS with seconds) to the end of the URL.”)

Comments

  1. I may not be a big firm IT, but my heart is aflutter over bit.ly bundling. Thanks for these Simon

  2. Lots of gold in these three bits of tech – thanks!

  3. Another great URL shortening service that allows you to group multiple URLs together and share them is Qur.ly. Though it’s in Alpha, it’s entirely functional.

    You can even shorten a ‘qurly’ within a ‘qurly’ – allowing a real depth of content. The site doesn’t use iFrames, and it displays thumbnails of the sites included in the short URL.

    I’d suggest checking it out.