1. Saleh Al-Zaid
EASD/GAD

2. Outline
• What is Untiny
• Untiny facilities
• Next features
• Single service sites

3. What is Untiny?
• A web 2.0 service to expand shortened (tiny)
URLs.

4. What is a shortened URL?
It is a URL that shortens a long URL like:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Abdulaziz_Interna
tional_Airport
to a tiny small URL like:
http://tinyurl.com/yj547qz

5. http://TinyURL.com

6. URL shortening services examples
• http://bit.ly
• http://is.gd
• http://rb6.me
• http://flic.kr (of flickr.com)
• http://wp.me (for wordpress.com)
• There are thousands of them!

8. But why Untiny?
Tiny URLs are used automatically in many web
2.0 services like Twitter.
The problem:
Some of these tiny URL services are blocked in
Saudi Arabia!

10. http://tinyurl.com/yj547qz

12. So is Untiny for Saudi users only?
• No!

13. Worldwide Use
• URL shortening services are also blocked in
other places in the world
• Used as a security tool to reveal the real URLs
behind shortened ones

14. What’s special about Untiny?
• 224 URL shortening services:
tiny.pl, tinyurl.com, is.gd, twurl.nl, bit.ly,
ping.fm, snurl.com, snipr.com, snipurl.com,
xrl.us, url.ie, wapurl.co.uk, url.co.uk,
rubyurl.com, minilien.com, easyurl.net, yep.it,
yfrog.com …
• API
• Add-ons in different platforms
• Part of other applications
• High usability

15. API
• Provides two services:
– Extract Service which retrieves the original URLs.
Example:
http://untiny.com/api/1.0/extract?url=http://tinyurl.com/yj547qz
– Services Service which lists the URL shortening
services that Untiny supports. Example:
http://untiny.com/api/1.0/services

16. Add-ons
• 12 Add-ons
• Firefox, IE8, Opera, bookmarklet, Mac app,
Shell script, chat bots …
http://untiny.me/extra/

17. UntinyFox

18. Part of other applications

20. Achievements
• More than 4 million URLs expanded so far
• 20,000 requests per day

21. Featured in many tech news websites

22. More than 300 reviews

23. People speak about Untiny daily on
Twitter
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=untiny

24. What’s next?
• Trying to solve the spread of shortened URLs
problem:
– 400 million links by Tinyurl.com
– 70 million links by is.gd
– More than 1 billion links by shortening services
– Cli.gs lost part of their links

25. What’s next?
• Solution: archiving shortened URLs and their
destination.
Untiny archived 1.5 million unique links so far

26. What’s next?
• Implement Google Safe Browsing service

27. Single Service Sites
• Concentrate on one problem
• Provides one function
• Easy to implement
• One developer or two

28. Yamli.com

29. Mrrha.com

30. Uzerat.com

31. Uzerat.com

32. zahmaola.com

33. You can make one!
• Find a problem
• Provide a simple solution
• Make it easy to use
• API!
• Market it in the social media
• Don’t stop, add more facilities

34. Thank You 
Q&A