Multi-Tab URL Shortening

Just to begin, I don’t have the answer to this question. If anything it was more an idea I had a while ago when I started to use services like TinyURL more and more. And since the explosion of use of Twitter, many people rely on these shortening service to share information or provide trackbacks to main articles.

But it has been bugging me for a while why there is no service that can take multiple tabbed webpages, compress them down into a single short URL, then spit the original tabs on the other end? It’s safe to say that every modern browser these days supports tabs. Heck, most mobile version for PDA’s, phones etc. have this same functionality. But if I want to share a browser session with someone, I’m unable to do this. Why?

FireFox & Internet Explorer both allow you to set multiple tabs up as your homepage through pretty much the same standard of:

My Homepage:  www.cannongod.tumblr.com | www.google.com

Using this vertical bar will tell these browsers how to open up each web address in separate tabs. Unfortunately this is where the limitation lies - you choose to allow those pages to open, so the browser responds accordingly. But with firewall and limited virus protection for your browser, clicking a link that tries to equivalently ‘reprogramme’ the browser won’t be permitted (and rightly so).

However, knowing this I still wanted to experiment with the range of information I could lockup inside a tinyURL. Unfortunately entering the above information won’t work, but I’m pretty sure I could shorten down JavaScript and get it to activate throught the link. Maybe with some modification a JavaScript file could be written that take’s each weblink and tinyURL’s it all down. Thus once clicked it runs and proceeds to open each in their own tab. Not entirely sure if that’s entirely secure and make the browser throw a wobbly, but definitely an area of investigation.  All I know is that right now I can write something like:

www.twitter.com        www.google.com      www.bbc.co.uk

Zip this up into a TinyURL and when you click on http://tinyurl.com/595up2 it should at least list each link you wanted to share. The browser won’t like it, but it will at least unzip each link into the address bar for you to cut and paste into separate tabs as you wish.

Is Kyte a Seesmic killer?

Following on from a del.icio.us link saved by AJCann (you probably don’t know it, but cheers!) - I came across a review of Kyte versus Qik and Flixwagon on TechCrunch written by arch bloggosaurus Robert Scoble.

After a read of the review, I started to play around with Kyte and what it had to offer. The overview video by Kyte was very informative as to how their service operates and can even monetize your content, which I thought was a nice addition :) It was from messing about leaving various video/audio/text chats from the web and my mobile phone on my initial video post - I started thinking if this had the potential to overshadow Seesmic. Here are my thoughts about the services, both the initial Kyte post followed by my post on Seesmic to get some feedback.

KYTE:

SEESMIC:

Feel free to leave me a comment in any form you see fit ;¬)

Shortlisted for PhD Interview

So I’m happy to report that I’ve been accepted onto the shortlist for the PhD I’m applying for. Hurrah! Although one of my referees has still yet to submit his reference despite both mine and the PhD supervisors efforts.

Aside from this I’m really glad I get to speak in person with my peers about my interests. I find it much easier to explain face-to-face rather than express it in written text, but that’s me. I’ll admit I had a pig of a time trying to write out a research proposal summary. My main problem is having too many ideas when I really should be trying to streamline them down, and when you consider a typical research proposal basically consists of one idea and a project that would encircle it - I become enraged! Being logical & scientific at heart there is never one solution to a problem and as such trying to include several research areas of interest into my proposal was no mean feat. But I think I made it:

My interview is scheduled for next week (Thursday 12th June) in the afternoon, but with work still needed on my NHS Game ASAP, I wonder if I’ll get time to prepare for the interview! :¬(

And yes, I used the word Telepathy in my proposal. Ballsy - but I knew what I was doing ;¬D