For years now, I’ve been a great fan of TinyURL.com. That web site allows you to create a short representation of a longer URL, for use in email.

One of the problems with those URLs, though, and with URLs in general, is that they’re misleadingly short. A particular web page may have a lot of significance, but if it doesn’t take up much of your message, there’s just no way for the recipient to see this at a glance.

WideURL.com fixes this. It creates an URL with more visual impact.

For example, here’s the WideURL for this post: http://wideurl.com/aitch-tee-tee-pea-colon-double-slash-oh-ess-tee-double-ee-ell-ee-dot-see-oh-em-slash-aye-are-see-aitch-eye-vee-ee-ess-slash-two-double-zero-six-slash-zero-four-slash-doubleyou-eye-dee-ee-you-are-ell. That’s much more significant-looking than simply https://osteele.com/archives/2006/04/wideurl, I think you can agree.