I’m a big fan of GitHub as some of you might know, so it was a pleasant surprise when they released their very own URL shortener - Git.io.
Services like that always inspire me to build stuff on top of them. It’s just great to see companies you love come up with cool stuff to play with. Sutini and I even had a brainstorming session over a nice cup of Starbucks coffee, whether this could be a project for furryfishApps. I wanted a simple way to generate Git.io URLs for pasting into E-Mails or Tweets. I could think of more features, but that’s the basic requirement.
Eventually, I decided to come up with a simple Mac OS X Service. When installed, you can highlight any GitHub URL, navigate to OS X’s Services Menu and generate a Git.io URL. You’ll get a nice Growl notification displaying the original URL and the shortened version. In addition to that you can instantly paste the Git.io URL into your E-Mail or Tweet.
There’s a lot to improve and it doesn’t work under certain conditions, however you can grab an unpolished version of the Service from my GitHub repository.