An Unwelcome Reminder of the Nature of URL Shortening Services

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For a while now I have been using pmid.us as a shortener for what were at one point in time unwieldy PubMed URL formats. Those long-form PubMed URLs looked hideous in the Longevity Meme emails, were a pain to cut and paste, and generally cluttered the place up.

URL shortening services are, of course, now generally regarded as one step removed from the Devil: unreliable creatures who will fail at some unpredictable time and vanish utterly, leaving all your shortened URLs stranded and broken. Pmid.us unfortunately looks like having joined that party, as it has spent at least the better part of today being non-functional.

In lieu of an on-topic post today, this missive is to let you know I'll be trawling through the archives for pmid.us shortened URLs and replacing them with direct links to PubMed. The more modern PubMed URLs are much shorter and cleaner than they used to be, so I have no complaints on that score. This was in fact an easy enough task over at the Longevity Meme, and is already complete for that side of the house, but it will take me a while to sort out matters here at Fight Aging!.

So let this be a lesson for all - if you care about the long-term survival of your external links, steer clear of URL shortening services, no matter how convenient they may at first appear.