Introducing Hu.la – our new URL shortener

I am excited to introduce Voodoo’s latest project, Hu.la, a URL shortener.  If you’re reading this post, you probably got here via a tweet or Facebook post via a short link.  While largely a commodity now, we decided to get in on the action too.  We secured this domain name earlier this year, and decided to launch our own URL shortner.  We’ve been using it internally for a couple months and now are rolling it out publicly so you can too.

One of the fun things about having the great engineering talent at Flatsourcing is being able to pursue projects like this, and occasionally they require a few hacks.  So, we want to share the story of how we built Hu.la:

  • bit.ly is the leader in the URL shortner space and we applied to and were accepted in the beta of their bitly.pro program.
  • The bitly.pro service powers New York Times, Amazon and TechCrunch’s own URL shorterns too.  You can sign up here.
  • In order to get a homepage that allows others to access the service, we took a lesson from the guys who created 511cc.org using bitly.pro.
  • And voila: we’ve launched Hu.la – take your links for a spin today.

Any questions or suggestions, please let us know.  We’d love your feedback and for you to make it your default URL shortening service.

Flatsourcing Dashboard Launch in the TechCrunch 50 DemoPit

We’re thrilled to be launching the new Flatsourcing Dashboard at the TC50 DemoPit. We’ll be in the DemoPit tomorrow, and are will be doing it up New Orleans-style with Mardi Gras beads and bottles of Tabasco.
It’s been a lot of work getting the new Flatsourcing Dashboard ready for launch. Oleg, Alex and Timur have been working really hard to get everything prepped. We’ll be releasing it to all clients next week.

Hurricane Gustav threw us a curveball this week and unfortunately Will Donaldson isn’t able to come along, but my good friend Gerard Ramos has stepped up and will be helping me out. I’m excited to spend time with the former local New Orleans developer who’s stepped up to the big leagues now in San Francisco.

Everyone has worked really hard to get the Flatsourcing Dashboard ready, and it is something that we’ve been thinking about for a while now. We felt a need for a central location for our clients to collaborate with us. But, we didn’t want to lock clients into a proprietary project management tool, we pride ourselves on working within existing project management protocol.

The Flatsourcing Dashboard (login:voodoo password:123456) accomplishes some of the things we feel are important when collaborating globally:

  • Get to know your team with avatars
  • Keep up on your project with a “news feed” of all communications in Basecamp or any other project management tools.
  • Keep track of your contract and invoices all in once place.
  • Get in touch with us in an emergency instantly and easily.
  • Learn the best way to work with us with FAQ’s and a client manual.

All of this is in the Flatsourcing Dashboard, providing “outsourcing insight” to our clients and taking our services to a whole new level.

I’m so excited to be out here at TC50. If you’re in town and want to meet up, email me at cschultz@flatsourcing.com. Follow me on Twitter for updates.

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