How do I get post.ly URLs of my posts?
I noticed that people who don't use Posterous' autopost functionality are using various third-party URL shortening services when manually linking to their posts. At first I thought that it's quite strange since Posterous has it own post.ly service, but I soon realised that shortened URLs for my existing posts are nowhere to be found.
But then I discovered that each Posterous post does in fact have its own post.ly URL, although it's only available through Posterous API. For example, to get post.ly URLs of my posts, enter http://posterous.com/api/readposts?hostname=pokorny into your browser and - voila! - the post.ly URLs appear. Simply replace my my name with your own hostname to get your posts as well.
Even though this works perfectly, I have found out that it is quite frustrating having to search the whole XML for post.ly URL of older posts. To make it even simpler, I have simply wrote a tiny application that does it for me - the post.ly helper! Now, all I have to do is type in a Posterous hostname and I get the list of my posts with post.ly URLs back.
This is simply too good to keep only for myself, so if you find it useful as well, please let me know.
