Shawty

The Shawty gem is the simplest and fastest Ruby url-shortening app. Run your own server that works like tinyurl.com or is.gd.

Instant installation and deploy

Clone this: git clone git://github.com/JackDanger/shawty-server.git
Signup for an account at Heroku (better details here)
don't even bother configuring it
push it to Heroku.com: git push heroku master
Revel.

Why?

If you run any application with published content it's helpful to have shorter links to that content.

Consider that your Rails app might offer pages like the following:

http://myapp.com/accounts/megacorp/invoices?single_access_token=5ASD32ADf89JKASF2346

Imagine trying to fit that in a text message. Instead, how about:

http://url.myapp.com/a7D

Is it so easy a child can use it?

Yes. See the shawty-client gem for details:

Shawty.new(
    "http://url.myapp.com/"
  ).shrink(
    "http://myapp.com/accounts/megacorp/invoices?single_access_token=5ASD32ADf89JKASF2346"
  )
# => http://url.myapp.com/a7D
## Saved on your url.myapp.com shawty server and usable immediately

Way groovy.

Patches welcome, forks celebrated.