Automatic Tr.im URL Shortening & Click Tracking with TextExpander

The guys who make one of my favorite applications, TextExpander, posted a great tip a while back to automatically shorten urls that are on the clipboard with the tr.im service.

It works wonderfully, except there is no way to track how many people click your shortened urls because you’re not logged into your tr.im account when the urls are shortened. There is a crazy easy way to log in to your tr.im account when TextExpander shortens your urls.

• Add this line as a new TextEpxander snippet and set it as an Applescript. Fill in your username and password where it says username:password.

• do shell script "curl --basic -u username:password http://tr.im/api/trim_url.xml?url=pbpaste | tr '>' 'n' | tr '<' 'n' | grep -m 1 -A 1 url | tail -1"

  
  

• You can also simply download this TextExpander snippet to add to TextExpander. You still must put your username and password where it says username:password. :)

• Set the shortcut to something like “trm” or similar.

Thats it! Anytime you want to shorten a url in any application, copy the url to the clipboard. Next go to where you’d like to paste the url. Type in “trm” or your shortcut, and it will paste the shortened url automatically.

Automatic iPhone Video Conversion with VisualHub

Everything I could possibly say about the iPhone has been said. Its an amazing phone and I am addicted to mine.

So the other night I made an automator workflow that can have the wonderful mac application VisualHub automatically convert any video files to iPhone compatible video.

Obviously, to use this, you’re going to have to have a mac with at least Tiger, and a copy of VisualHub.

I should also perhaps say that I have no experience writing tutorials, so this may or may not work for you. This is what worked for me… so hopefully it’ll work for you, too! :)

(Read the rest)