Chad’s News

Ever had a really long web address that you needed to send to someone, or to post in a comment somewhere—just to find that it gets split into pieces by the software? Or perhaps you have a complicated URL that needs to be entered by hand and is prone to error? TinyURL has been around for some time now, and it has the answer to this problem. Simply register the long URL, and TinyURL will give you a much shorter, email-safe URL with which to replace it. Clicking on the short URL will automatically redirect you to the long URL. The short URL never expires, so you can use it with impunity for as long as TinyURL is in existence.

Thanks to Josh for this topic.

Link: http://tinyurl.com/

Ever found yourself in need of a temporary email address that goes away after a day/week/month? The linked article has several disposable email providers—be sure to check the comments for even more.

Link: http://lifehacker.com/…

It’s becoming increasingly popular for parents to purchase internet domains named after their newborns, even to the point where the availability of a domain affects the name of the baby. Makes me glad I got cloman.com early on.

Link: http://www.businessweek.com/…
(via Lifehacker)

Astute Chad’s News readers are already aware that Skype’s VoIP services were down for about two days. Turns out that the indirect cause of the outage was a massive number of near-simultaneous reboots caused by Windows Update.

Link: http://heartbeat.skype.com/…
(via Lifehacker)

Here at the Chad’s News Command Center, we’ve heard quite a few stories about online lovers finally taking the plunge and meeting in person for the first time—usually to dismal results. And while the man in the linked article is an extreme case, it pays to be careful with any romantic prospect that you meet on the internet. I’ve heard of mothers sending pictures of their college-age daughters and claiming them to be their own pictures. And don’t believe anyone who says they’re a minor—most likely it will be some sort of law enforcement official working a sting operation to catch child molesters.

Link: http://www.smh.com.au/…
(via Kim Komando)

This man was called a nerd by someone online. He was so angry at the remark that he drove 1300 miles and burned down the other man’s trailer. Guess it pays to be polite when dealing with people online.

Link: http://apnews.myway.com/…
(via Kim Komando)

A major power outage hit San Francisco and brought down some heavy-duty web sites, including Second Life and craigslist. They were offline for a few hours. This, despite the fact that their hosting facility advertised seamless, 100% uptime. Guess it’s not enough to have just one hosting location.

Link: http://www.latimes.com/…
(via Kim Komando)

Regular Chad’s News readers will recall previous posts about Second Life, especially regarding how real-world companies are setting up “stores” in the virtual world. Turns out that many of them aren’t profitable enough to maintain, and the companies are closing up shop.

Link: http://www.latimes.com/…
(via digg)

PayPal—it’s not just for eBay anymore.

Link: http://money.cnn.com/…

Just enter the domain name, and this site will tell you who is hosting it. Not sure it works perfectly, especially when dealing with resellers.

Link: http://whoishostingthis.com/
(via digg)

Are you a legitimate mass emailer who has problems getting your messages past spam filters? Well there is a solution. Five major ISPs will guarantee delivery for a fee of $0.0025 per message.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/…

I’ve read about people losing jobs or job offers because of stuff they posted on the internet, sometimes years earlier when they were in college. There are also the criminals who got caught after uploading videos of their crimes. But this one takes the cake. The man in question lost an expensive lawsuit because of his online blogging. As a general measure, always be careful what you say online—it can come back to haunt you.

Link: http://www.boston.com/…
(via Kim Komando)