Summary: URL shortening services, such as TinyURL, are a problem. The
folks who have proposed rev=canonical have written some useful
software around it, but rev=canonical has some potentially
insurmountable issues.

I suggest the following posts if you find this at all interesting:

The post that drew attention to URL shorteners (by the creator of del.icio.us)
http://joshua.schachter.org/2009/04/on-url-shorteners.html

A summary of the work on rev=canonical, with good links and also a new
bookmarklet
http://simonwillison.net/2009/Apr/11/revcanonical/

An interesting post that makes the case for rev=canonical
http://adactio.com/journal/1568

An interesting post that makes the case against rev=canonical
http://www.mnot.net/blog/2009/04/14/rev_canonical_bad

"I (used to) like rev=canonical”
http://decafbad.com/blog/2009/04/13/i-like-revcanonical

An interesting assessment of the issues involved
http://intertwingly.net/blog/2009/04/14/Canonical-Reverse-Or-Wisdom-Defying-Shorturl

I'm not sure what happens now, but I hope the conversation results
quickly in as much software as is needed.

Brett

Brett Bonfield
Director
Collingswood Public Library
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856.858.0649