When I curate content, I like to insert short urls from my own short url service, http://tskr.us/, not to shorten the url but because I want to know how many people have clicked on the link.
There is a vocal group of people who dislike short urls, and there are many problems caused. They don't worry me so much, but if I could use something else I would. Which is why I am stoked about this new HTML5 attribute, its called ping.
The a and area elements have a new attribute called ping that specifies a space-separated list of URLs which have to be pinged when the hyperlink is followed. Currently user tracking is mostly done through redirects. This attribute allows the user agent to inform users which URLs are going to be pinged as well as giving privacy-conscious users a way to turn it off.
So I can keep the link to the original source, as I would like to do, and then add my short URL as one of the urls that gets pinged. Super usefull.
Submitted by alex on Fri, 03/05/2010 - 02:04