Get the Shortest URLS the Fastest Way

UNU is a URL shortening service, not very popular, but got potential.

The first time I used UNU, I was so impressed for the quality of service they gave me. Plus:

  • UNU claims that they are the shortest in the market. Bit.ly and the like use 5 characters after their domain name. With UNU, the domain name itself is short and uses only 4 characters.
  • The site was fast loading and suited well for my needs.
  • The stats are just what you need. The others would give a lot of reports like the source of traffic and stuffs that we often never care about. Just add a question mark (?) to the end of the UNU shortened link and you will get the number of times the link was redirected. (see: http://u.nu/47×4? )
  • The logo looks awesome. (Hey, design always matters)

Shortest URL Shortner

Something else that I liked was UNU’s API. It was so easy to understand, I am not a great programmer myself, and even I got it.

Short is Cute and Fast too – Get the Bookmarklet

UNU homepage offers a bookmarklet that you can just drag and drop into your browser toolbar and when you need to shorten a URL, just click on it. But it loads on the same page. Also, there is a faster way to get the URL shortened, without using any bandwidth. I made a bookmarklet using the simple API and here it is:

UNU It!

Drag and Drop the above link to your browser toolbar. When you need a link shortened, click it and a new popup window will return you exactly what you need. (Click here for a demo)

That’s it, when you need stats, add a β€˜?’ to the end of the url.

Tested on Firefox and Opera, it should work on all browsers with JavaScript enabled. If you get stuck, do let me know. πŸ™‚

Hello, I am Arun Basil Lal. Thank you for reading!

I am a WordPress product developer and creator of Image Attributes Pro. I am passionate about solving problems and travelling the world.

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29 Comments.

  1. Alok says:

    Useful service from UNU, I like “?” facility from UNU because if you haven’t any traffic tracking software and want to track traffic from your shorted URL, i think this is a good application, also very fast & less time taken.

    Again thanks Arun for your impressive post.

  2. Chethan T says:

    Awesome Man!
    UNU is interesting..
    Thanks for letting me know!

  3. Anony says:

    Useful bookmarklet. Why dont you try a popup than a ( usually ) slower window.open ?

    Good work

  4. Chat Business says:

    It is looking very cool! But, the speed is not that good here (Netherlands) dunno if its because of location, or just bad time

    • oh, its slow..? I thought that the bookmarklet would be really fast since it doesn’t load anything other than the shortened URL.Maybe its cuz of the location or time. Its fast here (and I have a slow connection).

      I love that place you are at. My dad have a friend in holland, he used to bring us chocolates. Cool people there and I have heard that the mindset is open. Pleased to meet you πŸ™‚

  5. Amal Roy says:

    Thats great. Thanks for letting all of us know about this great service.

  6. George says:

    Yes Arun You said it, UNU is lightening fast, thaanks for the info.

  7. Anony says:

    Another way of doing the samething , but this time using a popup.

    Not sure whether this will render here.

    Idek it

  8. Anony says:

    Well it didnt , so here we go again. This is just the bookmarklet code.

    var s=document.createElement(“script”);s.setAttribute(‘src’,”http://idek.net/shorten/?idek-api=true&idek-ref=your_app&idek-callback=js_callback&idek-anchor=anchortag&idek-url=”+encodeURIComponent(location.href));document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)[0].appendChild(s);
    function js_callback(url){alert(url);}void(s);

  9. I understood a lot from this review than from mine ! πŸ˜€

  10. Patricia Weber says:

    Yes that is a useful one. There’s even shorter ones, check out: http://txtn.us

    It uses special characters to guarantee just 6 characters in the URL, like this: http://❽.ws/❀

    Seems pretty cool.

    They also have tools to reduce text using ligature replacements, to fit more into the 140 limits. And some tools for fun text – flipped words, mirrored words.

    It’s beta but I’ve noticed it’s getting better.

    • wow! See that links. I am loving it!

      This comment went to spam, so maybe if we use such links the emails and replies would be spammed. Thats an issue, the spam filters are not equipped to detect them I guess.

      Thanks for the input here πŸ™‚

  11. Nihar says:

    Great post.

    Thanks for sharing this service…

  12. It is a really good service. But I usually use something called is.gd which has a firefox plugin to help with easy creation of these small urls to share on social media.

2 Pings / Trackbacks.

  1. […] time back I wrote a bookmarklet for u.nu. Some found it quite useful and told me about it via comments and on twitter. Here are some more […]

  2. […] loved their statistics and the idea of choosing custom URL’s, but now tr.im is closing down. U.NU is amazing for its simplicity and just-what-you-need style. (I don’t use bit.ly just because […]

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