We need a redesign....

XR.com needs a facelift. Ok, more than a facelift, it's needs a complete do-over.

We recognize that we've got some great features and even give you the ability to put your Adsense ads on your links but the layout just isn't up to snuff. Rolam Shahin has actually kicked us in the pants to point out exactly what's wrong with our homepage (and hasn't even delved into the member pages) and we acknowledge the critique.

His article "Big Sites that need a Redesign" targets Engadget and then targets XR.com slaming:
- our logo
- lack of value proposition
- everything is centered
- twitter search results layout
- footer

That's pretty much everything on the front page except for the layout of the input form.

Now, why would we do a blog post on this? When I built MyDomain.com, and then DomainManager.com we let the sites evolve based on member input. You ask for it, we'll build it in. Rolam is voicing his input on our homepage so now we'll do a redesign. Don't under-estimate the value we place on hearing from you - both good and bad.

Thx Rolam -- we'll get to work!

Your own domain + XR = your very own Tiny URL maker

Would you like to be able to create tiny urls based on your own domain?

For example, let's take the website OnlineRadioStations.com

This is a very cool website and of course a twitter page (at http://twitter.com/freeonlineradio ) and their web page urls based on onlineradiostations.com are fairly long like this one for an English Top 40 station in Egypt:

http://www.onlineradiostations.com/radio-stations/egypt/cairo/cairo/nile-fm-104.2/details.html

Now, of course, they could create a Tiny URL at XR.com like:
http://xr.com/ksd

OR.... they have something like: tiny.onlineradiostations.com/ejn

To do this, they created a subdomain called tiny.onlineradiostations.com and set it up in their DNS to CNAME to xr.com

Then when at www.xr.com, in the "Customize" section, they replace xr.com with tiny.onlineradiostations.com

That's all there is to it!

You can use a subdomain, or you can use your very own domain. That's exactly how we did it to make x.bb work with our system.

Now remember - in our database, all the codes are unique across domains, so xr.com/ejn won't go to the same place that tiny.onlineradiostations.com/ejn

For setting up your CNAME to xr.com, talk to your domain name provider. Most Registrars give you this ability (like enom.com or NameCheap.com), but you can also use DNS services like www.EveryDNS.net or DomainManager.com

If you find this confusing at all, please see the video. Hopefully it'll clear things up!

Introducing an even shorter url domain...... X.BB

We believe XR.com to be the shortest .com tiny url service out there, but we know that every character counts, so we'd like to tell you about a way to create even shorter links using our service.

When you are on the form, in the Customize section, replace xr.com with x.bb and then your new tiny url link will be based on the x.bb domain rather than xr.com. That is a full two characters shorter. Another way to look at this is that xr.com with 6 characters is 50% longer than x.bb with 4 characters (including the dot). Or x.bb is 33% shorter than xr.com. (It's all in how you spin it)

Try getting those kind of savings elsewhere! Here's a vid on the service. Please, someone put me out of my misery and submit a better video. There's a reason I like typing over speaking. At least my stuttering is under control.....





So let's check out twitter to see how many of you take up x.bb as your url shortening domain of choice: http://xr.com/0nk

Happy twittering!

Top Bar.....

Some people like it, some people don't. You can always log in and turn it off. But we like it and think it can be useful. So to that end we are expanding from the current Top Bar to a new and improved version, taking into account your suggestions.

Instead of the Web1.0 "Email this to a friend", we'll be adding more modern sharing devices like Twitter and Facebook. That way, when you share an XR link with a friend, it is more than easy for them to pay it forward and to share that link on their choice of social networks.

Should we get rid of the "Print" option?

How about the Google Search box?

Would people freak if we displayed an ad? How about if we displayed your ad, or shared the revenue?

What do you think about us replacing the Google Search box with a logo or image that links to your site?

Hit us up on http://twitter.com/xrcom anytime.

$6,000 Winner announced

We closed off 2008 with a bang with our crazy contest over at JohnChow.com where we gave away $6,000 in cash -- $1,000 to the winner, and a whopping $5,000 to the Charity of the Winner's choosing!

The winner was picked up at the last Dot Com Pho of 2008. We have it on video. The winner's charity was the American Cancer Society. http://www.johnchow.com/dot-com-pho-dance-with-a-zero-edition/

Thanks to everyone who entered and send us your ideas for future contests!

Yes, Virginia, there really is a $6,000 Contest...

You might be checking out the XR.com blog to see if what you have heard is true. And indeed it is. Following the initial $5,000 which was donated to the Union Gospel Mission, we are holding a new contest conducted by JohnChow.com in which $5,000 will go to the charity of the winner's choice, and a further $1,000 to spend on themselves.

Thankfully we've not received any (serious) complaints about that ratio of charity:winner! Charity goes hand in hand at Christmas time, so the deadline for entry is Christmas Eve and the winner will be drawn on Dec 27th.

Check out John's page for the rules, but basically:

- sign up for an account at XR.com (if you don't have one already)

- write a blog post or article, or video blog about it, and include the name of the charity you are playing for

- maybe tell us what you're planning to do with the extra $1000

- include a review of XR.com, and link to http://xr.com/ using the keyword: Tiny URL (because that's what we create - tiny urls!)

- post should link back to the contest page at http://www.johnchow.com/6000-contest-from-john-chow-and-xrcom or http://xr.com/6k-contest

When your post is ready, send a trackback to John's page. If the trackback doesn't automatically show up on his page, then enter the URL of your post in the Comments section there.

Some faqs:

Will we get $6k worth of "value" from this?

> Um, that's not the point is it? We're having fun giving money to Charity, that's the point. So, the question is really - will we get $1k worth of value from the $1k non-Charity amount we're giving directly to the winner -- Yeah, I think so. Who knows? Who cares? We're having fun!

Can I give it to my needy brother?

> No. You remember George's "The Human Fund" from Seinfeld? We're pretty loose here, but it has to be a Registered Charity. Looking for one? We really like the folks at The Water School

I'm raising money for Charity, will you sponsor me?

> Possibly. But it has to have a massive reach (like say, tattooing XR.com across your neck while you run across the country - idea stolen from DomainTools.com). We've done this one just for fun, but if you are approaching us for another, show us that it'll be worth it and let's talk.

Who gets the tax write-off?
Well, this is really a moot point. If the $5k were to go directly to you, then you would need to claim that on your tax return as income, and then off-set it with the taxable donation receipt from the Charity. Depending on your income and other giving, you might actually owe taxes. (Disclaimer: we are not tax attorneys or accountants so don't rely on this for any legal or tax advice, nor for dry cleaning advice, nor for advice on your relationships, etc etc, blah blah). So, best that the funds go directly to the Charity. On our side, it doesn't make a difference since most Charities don't issue "tax receipts" to companies. It just goes under Expenses.

Spam Free...

Spam free tiny url links...

Not everything we do is first to market. Some things are just incorporating what we see done elsewhere and think to ourselves: "Good idea/implementation/social good". And here's one that we saw over at Mark Jeftovic's EasyURL.net. We're good friends with Mark and share the common social good of hating spam (but then who doesn't?). Mark's EasyDNS.com and my DomainManager.com are both tied in to the dns blacklist program where we don't allow domains to be added if they have been used for spam.

Naturally, we want to ensure that XR.com is also not used for spam. So, when we saw that EasyURL had tied in with SURBL.org - we just had to follow. Hat's off to Mark - it's a great social good idea.

XR.com is now protected with Spam-free tiny URL shortening. We won't create any XR tiny url links if the destination URL is listed in SURBL.org.

Private Password Key

Being that our XR tiny url links are so incredibly short, it can be possible for others to randomly type in characters to see where the links are going. So, a private password key allows you to require your visitor to enter a password before being taken to the destination web page.

For example, when your visitor goes to http://xr.com/vio they will see a Password box. If the visitor types in the correct password (in this case "test"), then he will continue on to the destination URL.

This can be used along with the custom tag, custom domain (like x.bb) and is easy to set. Just log in to your XR account, click 'edit' and set the Private to "yes". The Password is unique for each of your XR tiny url links, and can be turned on and off at anytime.

----

Another use for this is for giving yourself password protected bookmarks. Let's say that you are sharing your PC/browser and you would like to bookmark an Amazon product page that you would like to buy for your significant other. Create a link at XR.com, set it to Private with a unique password, and then add that XR tiny url link to your Bookmarks. Now you have a password protected bookmark in your shared browser! Ditto for your office computer. Don't want your boss to know what you are getting him for Christmas!

WP Plug-in

Working on a Word Press Plug In so that you can create XR tiny url links to your blog posts for use in sharing...

Favicon - thx Jamie

In the true meaning of building this with input from our members and users, Jamie Parks build us a favicon to drop into the xr.com site.

"It will help users more easily identify xr.com in their bookmarks."

Thx Jamie - it's in and looks great!

Cool XR sites:

Eye Candy + Google = Groovle -- see it at: http://xr.com/0de

Kind of like XR.com, but for text: http://xr.com/tiny-text

WP themes: http://xr.com/wpthemes

Bookmarklet.....

From the www.xr.com/johnchow post, we had Chris Hunter ask"How about a bookmarklet to drag to my toolbar in FF?" In fact, he said it was a deal breaker..... "If I have to go to xr.com every time I need to create a URL, I won’t be using the service."

Ouch! Ok, let's take a look at this....

Seems that if we create a little Java script..... and send it to our API.... grunt..... toss in some scotch tape and string.... nip a little there..... tuck a little there..... google "IE7 sucks"...... ah, I think we got it. Let's see:

XR tiny url maker!

Click on this and then drag it up to your Links section in your toolbar.

IE Internet Explorer users: you can't drag this up, so here's what you do:
1. Put your mouse cursor over the link and right click.
2. On the menu, select "Add to Favorites"
3. A message may appear like - "You are adding a favorite that may not be safe. Do you want to continue?" - select "Yes"
4. It will say "Create in" and give you a list of Folders. The FOLDER to put this in is the "Links" folder.
5. Click "Add" and you are done.

Note: if you can't see the 'Links' toolbar, then in IE, select "View>Toolbars>Links" to make sure it's checked.
FF Note: if you can't see the 'Bookmarks' toolbar, select "View > Toolbars > Bookmarks Toolbar" and make sure it's got a tick beside it.

Now, when you are visiting a site and want to create a tiny url version of that URL, just click on the "XR tiny url maker!" button in your browser toolbar and we'll spit you back a shortened url faster than you can say lickety-lickety-splickety-lick.

Let us know if you run into any problems....

Thx

XR

---

PS if you want a Bookmarklet that connects to the API so that you get nothing but the created tiny url, here ya go:

XR

John Chow post!

Wow -- XR.com has been used and reviewed by John Chow at JohnChow.com. You can see his article at http://xr.com/johnchow

We noticed a spike in traffic and tracked it down to the John Chow posting about our service. Reading the comments was immediately useful and we've already made changes based on the comments there.

Firstly we had to deal with new abuse. We saw that we were getting a lot more links in the "recent links" section on the main page at http://www.xr.com/ and, thanks to John Sullivan we saw some were going to adult pages. So, we pulled down the 'recent links' section.

Next, Mark and Michael both pointed out that xr.com isn't the "shortest" url service. Well, our claim to fame is that we are the shortest .com url service. But that's not really good enough is it? So, to claim the "shortest url service" we have to reveal our secret domain: x.bb We know of no other single character domain that is being used for a URL shortening service. It wasn't easy to get and let's consider this a "soft" launch since it's not hard-coded into the main site yet. But to use it, just replace xr.com with x.bb in the Customize section at http://www.xr.com/

Check it out: www.x.bb/radio

Finally, hats off to Scott Yang for dissing us about not having an API, for having a Frame (hey, we thought that was a plus), and for not having our ducks in a row before John Chow wrote about us. We don't like to disappoint, so we slapped together the instructions on our built, but not released API. The frame can be turned off when you log in to your account, and can also be turned off when you create a link using the API. The command is &direct=yes

See the full API instructions at http://apicode.xr.com/

So, keep the comments coming. Open to all critics, fans and users.

Thx!

XR

PS Since we took down the "recent link" and the "Show All Links" from the main page, the only way to see all the XR links that exist is here. Note that some might be NSFW.

Baking Soda, Baking Powder

It's all in the details.... sometimes you spend so much time on the details and wonder if that's what you should be working on. But we're crazy that way. Not sure exactly why it took us so long, but there you go, we fixed the url-checking when a visitor enters a URL to redirect to.

You see, when we added the "cloud" of recently created tiny url links we noticed that a few of them were going to weird urls like: http://. or http://asdfasdf/ which are obviously cats typing by walking on the keyboard of users with no password protected screensaver enabled. So, with apologies to all those typing cats, we've implemented a basic url checking feature. Now, if we've been too strict, let us know what url you are wanting to redirect to. Oh, and you can't redirect to .exe files for obvious reasons....

Keep on baking and keep on sending in your feedback!

Thx!

Custom Tag

Small update, but it'll save you a few keystrokes. And isn't that what this is all about?

Now when you are inputting a Custom Tag, you can just type in words with spaces, and we'll automatically insert hypens.

So: gde ti remix becomes: www.xr.com/gde-ti-remix

(Hope you like russian pop -- and don't confuse this one with the number one russian hit that I heard last month in the Ukraine: www.xr.com/gde-ti )

Enjoy!

To Do List....

What better place to put the "To Do" list than right here on the blog. That's really 'putting it out there' so to speak. A lot of this comes from reading a few articles that have reviewed many of the url shortening services out there. Many of these services have great features, most have terrible (read long) domain names, but everyone seems to be missing something. So, while we can't be everything to everyone, since we are the shortest .com url shortening service out here, we are going to try and incorporate all the features a url shortening service should have.

So here goes...... (deep breath)......

Bookmarking - URLs need to be shortened via a toolbar bookmark button

Customization (already done) - but we're going to tweak it so that if you just type in words we'll fill the spaces with hyphens, so "map to my house" becomes xr.com/map-to-my-house

API -- half done and we'll release what we have very soon.

Trust -- you need to be able to use your own domain. Gotcha. We'll tell you how shortly.

Stats - ok, this is the biggie. Voted the feature to stay on the "to do" list the longest.

Preview -- you need to be able to just add "preview" in front of the xr.com link so that you can see the destination URL as well as static screenshot of the destination website.

Short URL -- well, we win for having the shortest .com domain being used for a url shortening service, but we have seen two letter domains combined with two letter country codes so they beat us by a character. Not to be defeated, we're shopping for a 1 letter domain to combine with a two letter country code. Can't really get much shorter than that, and we've not seen it done by any url shortening service yet.

Top-Frame on/off - we think the top frame is useful, but let's give you the ability to turn it on and off.

Private Label - after we let you use your own domain, would you like to have a private labelled top frame? We think so.

Earn Cash -- optional, but why don't we figure out a way for us all to earn some money?

Anything else? email us at info at xr.com and we'll add it to the list!

Custom Tag

It's one thing to shorten your url to be as short as possible, but it's also pretty cool to be able to make your short link relevant to the visitor.

You could send a link out to your friends with a generic: http://xr.com/gp8 or you could send them a more descriptive link: http://xr.com/lame-costumes

It's simple -- when you are at www.xr.com and you've pasted in the url that you want to shorten, if you click "shorten your url" then we'll give you an ultra short url. However, if you put in a custom tag in the "customize" box, then we'll create your own custom xr.com link.

Small bragging point -- we had this before tinyurl.com did. Small humble point -- we weren't the first.

Well, it's about time....

XR.com has been around forever, but we have been very quietly existing. Occassionally a user tracks us down and tells us of a feature they'd like implemented.

So, here we are. With a laundry list of ideas and a bit of time on our hands....

First up, is a "cloud" of sorts to show links that other users have created. It's especially interesting to see the custom ones that people create. Like http://xr.com/india-traffic that shows the insect-like characteristics of traffic in India versus the "I am immortal" attitude in Russia at http://xr.com/russia-traffic or the more somber http://xr.com/dead honoring the ultimate sacrifice being made today.

I have noticed that people like to shorten the login pages of sites they visit a lot. Like http://xr.com/hsc for the MMORPG login page for the Fallen Sword game, or the (still in beta) login to Fastmail.fm's newest version that has been a year in the making at http://xr.com/fast

Personally, I use xr.com the most for shortening the links to google maps. I mean, c'mon google, is this really managable: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&saddr=701+First+Ave,+Sunnyvale,+CA+94089+(Yahoo+Inc.)&daddr=Google+HQ+%4037.425381,-122.083679&hl=en&geocode=CeTzRpBNkvfOFVvwOgIdKAm6-CEMKgtdfYpTRQ%3BFeUQOwIdoSa5-A&mra=pe&mrcr=0&sll=37.372451,-122.017275&sspn=0.172162,0.362549&ie=UTF8&z=14 -- even if you don't mind a long descriptive link, wouldn't this be better: http://xr.com/yahoo-to-google

Enough rambling for now... What's next for XR.com? We'll start revealing some of the things that we have working in the background but that we've just not told you about. Like our API, or how you can use your own domain to work with XR.com, or (and some bloggers will love this) how you can run your very own url shortening service where the alias codes are unique to you.

Feel free to comment with your ideas of what we should be adding.

Thx!