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With the popularity of micro-blogging tools like Twitter taking over the web, every character counts. There was a time when one service was the go-to option for shrinking URLs, but today you’ve got countless options for trimming an unwieldy URL—you can even tracking how many clicks your compacted URL has received. So, for this week’s Hive Five, we want you to share your favorite URL shrinker. Keep reading for more details, then nominate the URL compactor you love and let us know why it’s so great.
Hive Five nominations take place in the comments, where you post your favorite tool for the job. We get hundreds of comments, so to make your nomination clear, please include it at the top of your comment like so: VOTE: URL Shrinker Goes Here. NEW RULE: Please don’t include your vote in a reply to another commenter. Instead, make your vote and reply separate comments. If you don’t follow this format, we may not count your vote. To prevent tampering with the results, votes from first-time commenters may not be counted. After you’ve made your nomination, let us know what makes it stand out from the competition.
About the Hive Five: The Hive Five feature series asks readers to answer the most frequently asked question we get—”Which tool is the best?” Once a week we’ll put out a call for contenders looking for the best solution to a certain problem, then YOU tell us your favorite tools to get the job done. Every weekend, we’ll report back with the top five recommendations and give you a chance to vote on which is best. For an example, check out last week’s Hive Five Best Compression Tools.
So you may have noticed, dear commenters, that when you move onto the second page of comments, they’re mostly collapsed. What’s the deal with that? Well, now, when you move onto the second page of comments, the only expanded comments will be those written by star commenters and those written by your friends. Want more of them to be expanded? I have two simple solutions for you.
A priest has resigned from his parish after being caught viewing Internet porn in his computer at work. While I’m sure God doesn’t give a damn about porn—no matter 
If you read Giz regularly, you’re as much a fan of smart design as you are of raw innovation. The legendary Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in NYC is letting the masses decide on their favorite designs over the past year, whether it’s the obvious (iPhone 3G or Beijing’s Eddie-Van-Halen-guitar-inspired National Stadium) or the more obscure (WTF is a Beluga KiteShip?). Go vote now because the competition ends tomorrow (10/21) at 6pm Eastern. [
Your internet tubes may have grown significantly in the past ten years—making file downloads faster than ever—but that doesn’t mean you don’t still dealing with compressed files every day. Fact is, nothing saves time sharing files like a good file compression application, and these days, you’re dealing with so many more formats than the old standard ZIP—you’ve got your RAR, ARC, TAR, and so on—and your default “unzipper” doesn’t have a clue what to do with them all. For this week’s Hive Five, we want to hear all about the application you use to unzip, unarchive, and create compressed file archives. Keep reading for more details and to nominate for your favorite file compression tool.
Connecting your laptop to the local coffee shop’s Wi-Fi without a good firewall and thinking you’re secure is like using a condom with thousands of holes in it and calling it safe sex. Your antivirus application is a good start, but if you want to make sure you’re computer is safe while you’re connected to the internet, a solid firewall is a must. Earlier this week we asked you to 
Despite our request for a software firewall, many of you were still adamant about sticking with the firewall that’s built into the router you’re using on your home network. Fact is, if you don’t use your computer outside of your home, you don’t necessarily need a software firewall—and you don’t have to run a separate application eating up RAM to get great firewall protection. However, as soon as you and your laptop leave the safety of your home, your laptop has essentially no protection if you don’t set up some sort of software firewall. So while your router’s firewall may be great, just remember: It can’t follow you out the door.
Arguing that it gets a bad rap because it’s a Microsoft product, many of you are perfectly happy with the default Windows Firewall. It’s built directly into Windows, runs quietly in the background, and blocks suspicious attacks without requiring you to install any third-party software.
Remember Nicholas Ciarelli, the precocious tween who started a successful Apple rumor blog, only to have it 
