There's been some heated discussion lately about URL shorteners and whether they're useful tools or pure "evil." My initial reaction was that much of the debate was overreaction -- after all, you'd be hard-pressed to send links on Twitter without services like bit.ly to cut down their characters. This week, though, I've seen some new evidence that's made me rethink my position.
The Ecosystem Argument
The argument started with a blog posting by Joshua Schachter, creator of social bookmarking site Delicious. Schachter described URL shorteners as being generally bad for most of the online "ecosystem," claiming they weigh down the Web by adding "another layer of indirection" and allowing for spam-oriented links or worse malware links to be masked. The part of his post that particularly strikes a chord with me now, though, is his stance on the potential problems with reliability.
Where Google Chrome security fails: the password I heard mention that the Chrome OS will have some sort of encryption available a la bitlocker. If it's possible to encrypt personal data using another password or key, then it may have potential for very secure data.... And Ubuntu has an 'encrypt home directory' option, perhaps google should follow suit.
- Dann
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