A very basic experiment that pads URLs with messages:
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
Vik's Blog 
Nice idea – it’s very similar to one I wrote up a year or two back (just posted the notes to my wiki: http://wiki.pansapiens.com/index.cgi/Adverts%20in%20URL%20real%20estate ) .. but I think your implementation using a # anchor is smarter than what I was planning. Will be interested to see how it goes.
Works in Firefox but not in Safari on Mac.
@Jeff Thanks – forgot to mention in my post that I only tested this using Firefox and Chrome on the top 30 or so sites. Safari, IE, Opera, etc. probably don’t work.
Hi Vik
The link is not working right now. Perhaps it is too full of popular memes for app engine to handle 🙂
Hey Ted – What browser are you using? Seems to be working right now …