I work online and also connect with friends via the Internet on a regular basis. So to make life easier I’m always looking for tools that can help me automate various tasks to save time. One such tool I have recently come across is the URL shortener.

Hold your horses. This isn’t your run of the mill URL shortener, these three versions of the same tool allow you to take multiple URLs and shorten them at the same time. If you spend any time at all on Twitter or similar social media sites, you know what a life saver this can be, especially when you want to send out all sorts of links to your list but you dread the two hours it will take you to shorten all the URLs.

I know I’d rather have my teeth pulled with no anesthetic than sit there going copy, paste, click, copy, paste, and so on until my neurons have turned into mush. So that’s why I’m sharing these tools with you today, because I am determined to save as many people as possible from the terrors of mindless, repetitive work.

Fur.ly

This URL shortening service is quite pretty, as these services go. However, we’re not here for its aesthetic appeal, are we? With Fur.ly you can enter as many URLs as you like and the system will generate a single, shortened URL for you. Once you send the shortened URL out, anyone who clicks on it will be taken to the first link in the shortened list and a bar will appear at the top of the page, where Fur.ly will present them with the remainder of the shortened links, allowing them to navigate wherever they choose. Fur.ly is a great way to keep a massive list of links organized and make browsing a lot easier. This way you won’t have to keep switching between browser windows to find the next link. Everything is nice and organized in the Fur.ly navigation bar at the top of the browser window.

MinMu

MinMu does much the same thing as Fur.ly except that when someone clicks on the shortened link, they will be able to see thumbnails of the links that were shortened. They can click on the thumbnail whichever link they wish to navigate to and the page in question will open up.

LinkBunch

LinkBunch is a simple URL shortener that does practically the same thing as MinMu. You simply enter your list of URLs in the text box, click the button and a shortened URL will be created. This URL will take anyone clicking on it to a LinkBunch page featuring the list of links you wanted shortened. As you can probably tell, my favorite of these URL shorteners is Fur.ly because it really does help keep things more organized, with all the links available at all times, without the need to flip between pages and browser windows. Plus, the fact that it looks quite nice doesn’t hurt either. However, you should try each one out for yourself, to find which one you prefer because you might find one of the others easier to work with.

This was a post by Lior who is a web consultant to few startups such as iAdvize, a live customer support company and also for a pretty well known neon signs brand called 123 neon signs.