We're all familiar with (well, maybe not all of us) URL shortening services like bit.ly and tinyurl.com. These tools are typically used within micro-blogging services like Twitter where keystrokes are at a premium. It's a bit of a single-task service that is destined to die a quick death in the very near future, but that's another post...

Leave it to the cynical anarchists on the Internet to reinvent this service.

Say hello to Shady URL: www.shadyurl.com
Warning: This service is not for everyone.

It will recreate a URL you enter as an alternate URL. It won't shorten it, however; it will recreate it with a variety of  "shady" phrases and keywords. The sample they use on their home page says it best:

Example:
http://spongebob.nick.com/backstage/characters/spongebob/
becomes
http://5z8.info/malicious-cookie_d5d2_hateminorities

As you can see, it added in the phrases 'malicious cookie' and 'hate minorities'. Our quick tests of about a dozen attempts revealed fairly hateful and somewhat inappropriate phrases about 75% of the time. The others ranged from quite funny to sexually explicit.

So while this first crack at making fun of URL shortening services is quite juvenile and mean spirited, it does serve to poke fun at the plethora of virtually useless tools that abound on the Internet today.

I will, however, continue to look forward to a URL recreation tool that is actually funny.