TinyURL Service

Over at Hawk Wings, Tim Gaden points to the TinyURL Service by Rachel Blackman. Once installed (which annoyingly requires a restart), this Service allows you to create a TinyURL simply by selecting the URL (e.g. in the address bar of your browser) and invoking the Service (either through the Services Menu, with the global hotkey, or with Quicksilver). This saves some steps compared to using TinyURL's bookmarklet. Tim draws attention to this because using TinyURL is one of the workarounds for dealing Mail.app's unfortunate tendency to break links in emails sent from it. Instead of dragging the URL from your browser, just select it and invoke "Shrink URL," and the appropriate TinyURL will appear in your address bar for dragging and dropping. Another ready constituency for the Service is the whole mob of Twitter fanatics, of which you can include us here at TUAW.

Rachel's TinyURL Service is a free download from Riverdark Studios.

[Via Hawk Wings]

Update: In the comments below, Sparks (i.e. Rachel) notes that she has addressed some of the concerns with her first version and has a new version that can Shrink the URL to the clipboard. It can be downloaded from her site here (zip).