Announcing Link and Tell
October 16th, 2007 | by Ryan Stewart |On September 25, 2007 Lifehacker’s Adam Pash wrote about a site called urlSplit.com - a site that allows the user to input up to seven urls and combines them into one, easy-to-use url. To the average web user, such a site seems useless. As it turns out, the very first commenter on the article said, “Good idea, but useless in reality…”
He was not alone.
In fact, Pash himself stated what he’d like to see the site actually do.
The site is built on an interesting idea, but in practice it could use some workâin particular, one would expect to be able to continue following the link chain from each link location (through some sort of proxy hosting). As is you have to continue opening the same link in a new tab until you see that it repeats, which really just causes more ambiguity than it’s worth. If it worked as I suggested, though, URL Split could be a nice tool for sharing simple link tours or step-by-steps.
While I like the functionality of urlSplit, I could also see how useful a site like the one Adam described could be - so I set out to create it. Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to introduce LinkandTell.com
Instead of repeating myself, I’ll just copy, directly from the site, what it can do.
Link and Tell makes slideshows out of websites.
You tell us which sites you want to share, and what (if anything) you want to say about them, and we’ll wrap everything up in a tight little package and deliver it to you for sharing with others.
It’s a great way to introduce your grandma to all the different photo sharing sites, tell your pals what sites you like, compare a group of content management systems, or build a bibliography for a recent blog post. Give it a try, we think you’ll love it!
As always, please feel free to post your feedback here. The site has nowhere near the functionality that I want it to have when it’s complete - but it works now, so I wanted to share it with you.
FYI - urlSplit is actually a very useful site (as pointed out by Dan Grossman in the article’s comments).
5 Responses to “Announcing Link and Tell”
By Travis on Oct 16, 2007 | Reply
Cool! I like that you can include comments on each site in the package.
One suggestion: add a way for the viewer to exit the frame, and view the site they’re at full screen. I know that lets them click away from link and tell (which obviously isn’t ideal - you certainly don’t want users driven away!), but I think overall more freedom is better.
Would that be easy to implement?
By Travis on Oct 16, 2007 | Reply
One more thing (for now, anyway!) - it’d be nice if there was an indication of which “page” you’re on at the moment - once you click somewhere else, you could forget which page you’re at.
Another idea for the page navigation - add a next and previous button, and maybe even a last button (might be helpful for a package with a lot of pages).
By Ryan Stewart on Oct 16, 2007 | Reply
Thanks for the feedback, Travis.
In the comments section beside the word “notes” there’s an icon that users can click to view the page full screen. Perhaps I should make that more obvious.
The other navigation features that you mentioned are already on my to do list, I just haven’t gotten that far yet
It shouldn’t take too long to implement, but I wanted to get things functioning first and then add the small details in the coming weeks.
Thanks again!
By Travis on Oct 17, 2007 | Reply
I see the full screen button now, didn’t notice it the first time.
Sounds good on the other stuff - I think it’s a great start, and I’ll be watching to see how it evolves.
By Jeff on Mar 9, 2008 | Reply
Suggestion.. it’d be good to show the URL and/or title of the site in the lower frame. It can be hard to see..and if you want them to remember the URL they should see it!
I’d put it instead of this text…which is already in the browser location bar-
“Link to this: http://www.linkandtell.com/XJDJO”
Also the guide text seems like it should be big/hilited. The dominant page element is the linkandtell logo..nice logo, but put the user’s content first and foremost.