Tech Week In Review: bit.ly, Facebook, Kindle DX

bit.ly is Stomping with the Big Dogs

According to TechCrunch, bit.ly is now the biggest URL shortener by a nose. This comes on the heels of Twitter installing bit.ly as it’s default URL shortener. Also, bit.ly just upgraded their sidebar bookmarklet so that you can shorten and share a link on Twitter, Facebook or email without skipping a beat. Not sure if they’ve been reading my mind, but this simple ability to tweet/share a link from their sidebar bookmarklet was exactly what I had been wishing for. You can also add this feature to your own website using their simple site publisher plugin.

Facebook Promoting SMS?

Apparently, Facebook is promoting it’s SMS features by sprucing up their mobile landing page and adding a “Subscribe via SMS” link to users’ profiles. While the SMS feature isn’t knew, the actual promotion of it is. Some see this as a challenge to Twitter, reaching out to a broader audience via text messaging and kind of stepping into Twitter’s space. This could possibly be true, except for the fact that Facebook STILL doesn’t support T-Mobile. As a user, I really don’t care what the reasoning is behind Facebook not supporting one of the biggest carries in the US (and probably the world). As long as their carrier selection stays this limited, they are no competition in the mobile arena.

A New Kindle

In case you missed it, the Kindle is an electronic device that lets you read books in electronic format. Amazon recently revealed the new Kindle DX, which is bigger and better than the other versions. Most interesting about this new Kindle is that, beside just being a flashy new gadget, it’s offering discounts to people who also commit to a long-term subscription to certain newspapers. There are also a few universities testing out using the Kindle to replace textbooks.