Thanks to Twitter and the claustrophobic constraint of 140 characters, link shorteners have become a common part of sharing links on the web. There’s something oddly satisfying about scrunching up an unwieldy link down to just a handful of characters.
Today, we’re announcing the availability of yet another URL shortener with a convenient little twist: rdd.me:
It works like any other link-shortener except for one very important distinction: it bakes the power and convenience of Readability right into the link. If anyone opens an rdd.me link, they’ll see a reading view option up top that lets them turn on Readability. If they open the link on a mobile device, a lightweight mobile version of Readability kicks in to present the page in a clean reading view. Rdd.me is even smart enough to leave alone web pages that don’t need an optimized reading view.
We’re also excited to announce that one of our favorite curators, Maria Popova, the editor of Brain Pickings will be helping us spread the word about rdd.me. Through her popular @brainpicker Twitter account, Maria will be using rdd.me as the shortener of choice for all that great article content that she discovers and shares.
Rdd.me is free for anyone to use and share. A Readability account is not required. So what are you waiting for? Go forth and shorten…and read comfortably!
Hey Rich — I asked for something pretty close to this the other day.
http://scripting.com/stories/2011/04/12/anInstapaperIdea.html
I want to hook my URL-shortener in there, because I use it to track clicks and flow the data back into my system. But I want the Readability functionality sometimes, but not always.
I wonder if I put you guys in touch with Joe Moreno, the guy who does Adjix, if you guys could work out a connection. That would make me very happy. :-)
Dave
Is a bookmarklet available? I looked around the add-ons page but didn’t see anything.
Hi Dave – sure connect us and let’s see if we can whip something together.
found a bug. tried shortening http://stuff.techwhack.com/11273-rdd.me and the service probably detected rdd.me in the link and refused to convert it! :)
@David – we don’t have a bookmarklet just for generating an rdd.me link (yet), but if you use “Read Now”, you can then get the rdd.me link out of the “Share” box on the left.
@S – D’oh, good catch. We’ll ticket that one and get it fixed.
eagerly waiting for a bookmarklet or API.
Another vote for a bookmarklet to replace the convenience of my bit.ly bookmarklet!
I just shortened a URL, got the short link, tested it but it won’t expand.
The link is – http://rdd.me/zhkppsaf
Or is it just me?
Expands just fine for me, Ben.
There’s no API? Arrrgh. Please just clone the tinyUrl API. Simplicity itself.
the bug is still not fixed!
@S: Please reach out to contact@readability.com or via Twitter for an update on our progress. Thanks for keeping an eye on the bug!
i really hope a bookmarklet can be provided. using the read me bookmarklet takes way too long to reformat the page and show the new url.