My Simple URL Shortening WordPress plugin is currently under-going a bit of a change! From a few of the most popular URL shortening services, it will soon be, from what I can tell, the most powerful shortening plugin available.

Let’s look at some stats.

I’ve looked at 380 URL shortening services. 67 have “gone to the wall” and 131 don’t appear to have an API (although I will be contacting them at a later time to confirm this). However, of the remaining, there are now 121 URL shortening services available via the plugin – this compares to the 25 that were originally available.

Oh, and I’m awaiting API details from a handful of providers.

Or, in graph form…

To achieve this, unlike previous versions of the plugin, I’ve had to read JSON and XML return files. Not a great issue, but it expands the code by quite a bit.

At the moment the plugin can only request short URLs via a GET, not a POST (and those that use the latter make up for a lot of the “Other” numbers). I’m sure I’ll add that feature in future!

I’m still testing the plugin, but it should be released soon.

On a couple of my PCs now I’ve had a problem where Microsoft Update stopped working, reporting the error code 0x8002802B. Looking this up in the Microsoft knowledge base yielded no results, but a quick Google and I found a “Fix it” utility from Microsoft. Sadly, that didn’t fix the problem.

After much trawling I found an answer – and this worked for both instances (both of which occurred months apart).

Either, open up the command prompt (click on Start, Run and type type in CMD) and type each of the following lines in one at a time OR cut and paste them into a .BAT file and run that (I do the later).

REGSVR32 MSXML3.DLL
REGSVR32 WUAPI.DLL
REGSVR32 WUAUENG.DLL
REGSVR32 WUAUENG1.DLL
REGSVR32 WUPS2.DLL
REGSVR32 WUCLTUI.DLL
REGSVR32 WUPS.DLL
REGSVR32 WUWEB.DLL
REGSVR32 QMGR.DLL
REGSVR32 QMGRPRXY.DLL
REGSVR32 JSCRIPT.DLL

You’ll have to click “OK” when each line is run, but there’s no reboot required – simply restart Internet Explorer and try out Microsoft Update again.

I should add too, that automatic updates from the system tray still appear to work when this error occurs.

Google have released details of a public, global Domain Name System (DNS) resolution service that they’ve created.

Simply replace your default DNS server settings with their own and you could – potentially – see a speed improvement in your surfing. I’ve already done this and can already see a noticeable improvement, with no issues (yet) experienced.

You can either change these settings on a per-computer basis or on your router (I’ve done the latter). The new DNS servers are 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 (in which ever order you want).

Google states that their aims are to provide greater speed and with improved security. Of course, whether you choose to allow Google to (potentially) track your domain usage, is down to your own level of paranoia. Personally, I’m happy.

Let me know your own experience.