Thanks to another great Daring Fireball post, I've disabled frames on Baconfile. Sorry, Google image search.
Actually, Gruber's post was prompted by Digg's new DiggBar which frames sites with a top navigation bar served by Digg. This is annoying on several levels, mostly because it obscures the page's URL.
Here's the example: http://digg.com/d1nYVs
I pretty much agree with Gruber about the importance of URLs: they should tell a user where they are and be simple, informative, and easy to share. I also don't agree with Digg branding my (personal) project site and serving ads against it either (just click on the "Related" link on the Digg bar to get an ad).
Baconfile is my pet side project and I've had a lot of fun developing it in my free time over the past couple months. It's a web interface for files on Amazon S3 and I actually love that it's not very popular.
All the fun of running a website without any hassle ;)
I actually implemented my own URL shortener for Baconfile, called tinyb.cn (Tiny Bacon). Instead of shortening any URL on the web though, it's only used for URLs that redirect for Baconfile. The idea being that when a user sees a tinyb.cn URL, they might guess that it redirects to baconfile.com.
Here's a URL to a file permalink page on Baconfile: http://baconfile.com/wilsonminer/This%20thread%20is%20useless/
Here's the Tiny Bacon URL for that page: http://tinyb.cn/2j
There's even a Twitter button on the bottom of each Baconfile permalink page that redirects to Twitter and pre-populates your tweet with the tinyb.cn URL. It doesn't require a username/password, nor does it post the tweet for you automatically, it's just a link - like this.
I created tinyb.cn to make tiny URLs more transparent and informative instead of misleading and self-serving. I'm sure I'll write more about how to make a URL shortener, but for now let's just consider how we can use tiny URLs for good.
