There are lots of problems with long URLs, but in the name of brevity I’ll stick to two of them, namely: there is no way to remember them, and they look awful as links. A variety of URL shortening sites like this one has been popping up in the internet for some time now, and RickRoll.it comes to join them. What they do is very simple: the sites translates a mile-long URL, like the ones pointing to Google maps or PDF documents, that have loads of numbers and letters and codes, into a TinyURL, that is: a subdomain like RickRoll.it /8gyh. The idea empowering the site is that it should be used together with Twitter to post reasonably sized microblogging entries, to be able to remember the URLs for sites, to make posts in forums or comments look reasonable, and the one I like best: to shorten URLs pointing to documents, articles, images or other sources which one cites when writing an academic paper. Being able to type the reference you are submitting will allow people reading your printed material to automatically check your sources. In contrast to similar sites, you don’t need to do anything to use the service: just paste the URL into a dialogue box, or even better, create a bookmarklet of RickRoll.it in your browser, and when you are visiting a site you want to get a short URL for, just hit the button and done and over with the numbers: you’ll be redirected to the RickRoll.it site, where the new URL will be waiting for you, as it will always be, as these addresses don’t expire.