A very basic experiment that pads URLs with messages:

http://anymeme.appspot.com

or more appropriately http://anymeme.appspot.com/anymeme.appspot.com

Notes

• This is not related to any work I’ve been pursuing during my EIR gig.
• It’s kind of like the opposite of bit.ly (there is a shortener available on the site though). It’s better tailored for shorter URLs where there’s enough address bar space to display a message at the end of the URL.
• I tested this on the top 30 or so sites using a mix of Firefox and Chrome.
• This could easily be the dumbest thing I’ve ever developed, but then again there are a lot of dumb things on the web. It took longer for me to write these posts describing anymeme than to develop the code for it. This is more of an experiment to see:
  • If users, publishers, and advertisers like it
  • To try to make URLs more interesting and valuable
• It would be so cool:
  • To generate enough cash via sponsored messages to make meaningful contributions to great causes
  • To see an important breaking news headline or an interesting tweet as you load up hulu to check for new episodes – visible in the previously half empty address bar so there’s no need to frame or change the destination page to show the content.
• It currently runs on Google App Engine