Fred Cirera

I just opened http://kiq.me/, a new service developed in Python, with Turbogears framework. Kiq.me allows you to encode a very long URL (web address) into a shorter one. I had already developed a similar service called wittylink.com, which is still operating, but I needed a shorter domain name and wanted to add new features, so I created kiq.me.

This new service has two features: it is twitter aware, and your urls are encoded into Data Matrix barcodes.

• Twitter. When you encode your URL, kiq.me allows you to directly post the newly encoded URL and a message on twitter. You don’t have to cut and paste or copy the new url to your twitter page. Just check the box post this url on twitter, type your account information and message and “voila” the new short url is posted on twitter. For example the URL to this article is encoded into http://kiq.me/S

• Barcode. Your new short url is also encoded into a Data Matrix barcode. You can print this barcode in your organization’s newsletter, on a poster, on an ad, on your business card, send it by email, or put the image on your website. This allows every user of a phone with a camera and a web browser to take a picture of this barcode and to be automatically routed to your web site.
  There are plenty of bar code readers for cellphones. For example, you can search the iPhone App Store for beetagg reader, neoreader, or upcode. I like upcode, it is light and does a good job.

So please give kiq.me a try and let me know what you think. I’m considering adding interfaces to other services. I’d like to know if this is useful to you first.

I have just posted some changes to BlogMag.net.

def comment_save(self, id, Captcha={}, **data):