made by a human being.
free, that's right, there is no charge at all on this one!

just paste or type in the URL(s) you want to compress
(you can zip multiple URLs, simply separate them with spaces!)

zip options

enter some tags seperated by a space (if you want) that categorize your URL, like "fun" or "technical"
add a password to the zip? (leave blank if you don't want one)
zip options
make zip private? (don't display on homepage / recent zips)
allow users to choose which URL to load? (if zipping more than one URL)
customize your url, add your own 'tag' to the end of the URL (leave blank if you want me to make one up for you)
http://zipmyurl.com/
click it to zip it!
zip another url
thinking, please wait
so tell me more about this? and who made it.

me! A long time ago in a country far far away, well not actually that far away (England) and it was November 2007 actually. Anyway I was trying my best to cook up an idea that I could work on and I was struggling to be honest. I had spent the whole of 2007 working like an absolute dog building Alterhit.com, and I really needed a change of direction. I had just started a new job and really wanted to break out something different. You may ask "what the hell is different about this?" well you would be right in thinking that it's similar to the hundreds of other URL shortening services out there, but I like to think I built this with a little style and added functionality that you just don't see out there in the other services. I personally use twitter and I use del.icio.us and thought that it would be really neat to be able to both shorten URL's (more than one at a time in the same zip), as well as publish them to my favourite web 2.0 services.

This is a product of my love of hacking code, nothing more. If you enjoy it and you use it, why not donate some money? I love a good beer.

I started hacking a few ideas together, with the help of some excellent API's and some patience I managed to get a little prototype together. You know what? it worked! so I just kept on hacking code and kept on going and going and here we go! You are enjoying the fruit of my many many weekends and evenings sat developing, swearing at my computers and trying to stop my dog from jumping on my lap and licking me. The poor little thing just wanted some attention.

I really can't design very well, I really tried to come up with some really glassy icons and some 'oh-so-hip' colour schemes, I just sucked. I spent a whole bunch of my christmas holiday sitting and getting annoyed at myself for not being able to think of colours that matched. All of a sudden I remembered how my wife sometimes sniggers at me because I have on white shoes, brown trousers and a red t-shirt with a black coat. It clicked! the thought "ah that's right, colours are not my thing". I looked for another solution and downloaded some colour scheme software. I tried and tried and somehow ended up with blue and brown! I also used the most excellent icons from Crystal Clear to create many of the icons on the site, as well as the logo.

My name is Dave Shanley and I live with my Wife and puppy in London England. If you want to know more, why not email me or visit my personal site.

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