Years ago we began using tinyurl.com to create redirect aliases with neat, short little URLs to include in emails or on web forums.
 
Enter Twitter with its 140-character limit, and URL shortening services sprouted up everywhere. And now that it's a PR necessity to publish news via multiple channels, once the bit.ly or snip.url or tr.im link has been created it is often used not only in a tweet, but also in Facebook notes, forum posts, and email newsletters ... used, in fact, absolutely everywhere the link is published.
 
This is a big mistake! What's the big problem? Here's a scenario:
 

• your company spends a lot of money to create an informational web page about your product or service
• you tweet and FB-post and blog and email out a shortened url
• two months later the URL shortening service you used disappears off the face of the map
• three months later a potential customer comes across your blog post and clicks the link, ending up on a 404 page. You may have just lost a good prospect!

 
Apparently I am not the only one who has mused over this scenario as we watch the use of short url's proliferate in all channels. This morning I clicked through a series of linkback posts that brought me finally to Joshua Schachter's thoughts on the topic. He presents a number of reasons why short URLs suck.
 
Use them for Twitter, sure. But when putting out news via any channel other than such a severely character-limited channel, use the full URL if it's not too messy, or create a "friendly URL"  that YOU control, such as a line in your site's .htacess file, or aDrupal URL alias entry.

Yesterday morning Google posted an entry in their Gmail blog announcing, I guess for their North American customers, anyhow, the new feature for making free phone calls from directly within Gmail.

Starting today, you can call any phone right from Gmail. Calls to the U.S. and Canada will be free for at least the rest of the year and calls to other countries will be billed at our very low rates. We worked hard to make these rates really cheap (see comparison table) with calls to the U.K., France, Germany, China, Japan—and many more countries—for as little as $0.02 per minute.

The comparison table lines up Google's prices against the "Leading internet telephony provider". Gotta be Skype right? In which case this is very misleading.

At Adept we use Skype almost exclusively. For $3/month per user account, we can make unlimited calls (up to 10,000 minutes per month, max 6 hrs per day, under their "fair usage policy") to anywhere in the US or Canada. For 10 Euros per month we can make unlimited calls to landlines in more than 40 countries. Depending on one's phone usage, the Skype plans probably work out cheaper.

Not to mention that Skype-to-Skype calls anywhere in the world are free, and include software that allows for sharing your desktop for viewing by the other party. This is how most of our techie colleagues communicate with us. For free. Including being able to show what we're talking about.

We're also curious to know if Google is making similar offers to folks outside the US -- please comment if you know anything on this question. Not only is Skype a local contender in 1/5 of the countries on Earth, but if one lives in a country not on their list, one can always sign up for a plan that originates in a country other than where one happens to be physically located. For example, if Adept opens an Amsterdam office (a dream we hold dear), we can obtain a Netherlands phone number and answer it here in New York City.

Google, you've gotta do a bit better, we'll be watching.

Have you ever worried as you add more and more valuable content to your Google Sites, "What if I need a backup copy of this some day?" Not that we expect Google to disappear off the map any time soon... but if you are a natural worry-wart risk manager like myself you tend to think in all sorts of scenarios. For example, "What if another person with edit rights makes a major screw-up and deletes stuff we need? What if a disgruntled person does damage to the site?"

For months I've been searching for a way to back up Google Sites. Not sure what I did differently in today's web search, but I found a great tool on the Google Code site called ... Google Sites Liberation!

"google-sites-liberation" is a little java app. Worked flawlessly on my Mac (Leopard, Java 6). It just consists of one little form you fill in and click Export. There is also an Import option for lossless uploading of the backed up content to a google site. The home page for the project shows an example of a filled in form that applies to sites created under a regular Google account. Here is my form filled in to access a client's Google Apps sites:

• in the "Host" field, this will always say sites.google.com
• domain is self-explanatory
• "webspace" means the final portion of the URL for the homepage of the particular site.
• for username do not enter the "@ourdomain.org" portion of your Google Apps account
• TIP: the Java app does not allow creation of new export target directories on the fly. Create the target directory directly on your computer first, and then use the "Choose Target Directory" button in this app.

 After a recent upgrade to the Drupal verison that runs this web site, I could no longer authenticate to manage the site or post new content. 
 
After wondering what was up for a full day, I finally headed over to drupal.org to see if anyone else is reporting the problem. Well, Drupal forums to the rescue ... 
 
Depending on the configuration of your settings.php file, you may need to clear cookies in your browser that are stored by the site you are trying to log into. (It seems this is the case as of the 6.17 upgrade.)
 
To clear your site cookies in Firefox, go to Preferences (Mac) or Tools (Linux/Windows) and visit the Privacy tab. Click on the link to "remove individual cookies". Filter the list of cookies in the next window by typing the name of the site in question. Highlight cookies from that site and click the "Remove Cookie" button.
 
You should be good to go now!

In the process of creating some reports for a client the other day, for the umpteenth time I found myself wishing for a visual picture of the back-end database for Salsa. I worked up a partial diagram, including the tables that I was particularly curious about. Note that I have *only* included primary and foreign key fields -- just as a way to map the relationships between the tables.

If you'd like to view the diagram (ERD style) click on this thumbnail, or right-click and save the image to your computer:

UPDATE 2010-09-02: An omitted join table has been added (supporter-chapter), and the number of crossing lines has been minimized by color-coding chapter_KEY wherever it occurs rather than drawing lines for the chapter_KEY relationships. Much easier to interpret now!

Ilyse is endowed with the ability to think creatively and out-of-the-box, and at the same time never takes a conservative and careful eye off of impact assessment for any idea being floated. She knows what questions to ask and has experience in many realms that she brings to bear on formulating her suggestions, and in planning and executing her work.

Adept attended the Salsa conference in D.C. in June ... and what a conference it was! Read the guest blog about the conference by Ilyse Kazar on the Salsa website ...
 
"And what is Salsa?" It's a multi-faceted web application that interacts with the Democracy In Action (for NPOs) and Wired for Change (for election campaigns) databases. It is used to send email blasts, manage a supporters list, segment your list into Groups, run discussion lists, create Donation pages, and more. It is highly customizable, and has an API so that you can incorporate forms into your own web site.
 
As time allows we will be adding some tips and blog pieces about Salsa ... stay tuned!

On working with Adept's lead consultant, Ilyse Kazar:

With a keen understanding that organizational cultures vary, Ilyse quickly grasps how the entity that she is working with functions and tailors her work accordingly. This was no small task given that DDC is an after school program operating in the confines of a major research university. Additionally, through her far-reaching vision, Ilyse was able to anticipate what our needs might be down the road and designed a product that was easily adaptable to future concerns that might arise.
 
Ilyse is very practical and brings broad value to the table as an interdisciplinary type of consultant. Beyond just having developed a fully integrated database for DDC, she became an integral part of the DDC team. 
 
-- Olger C. Twyner III, former Executive Director, Double Discovery Center

Adept delivers top-notch work in a manner that is very orderly and timely, yet creative, visionary and inspiring us to expand our view of the possibilities. Ilyse Kazar is a strategic thinker, is very focused on the project at hand, and is a seasoned professional. She helped us understand our business in a way which we had not been able to do ourselves. Adept delivered an excellent application that made all the difference in the world to us.  I recommend Adept consulting and developing services without reservation.

 
-- Stephen Brown of Systems & Solutions Group, Inc.
 

I love this concept of a joyful funeral for failed efforts: