AirLink App

AirLink was a web application for desktop and mobile that made it easy to send URLs from one device to another. Just like Apples iCloud Tabs, but one year earlier.

Back in 2010, I had a annoying problem: I was making websites in my free time and I often needed to look at a page not only on my desktop, but also check it on my smartphone.
The problem was that it took me forever to type in these ugly, long development-stage URLs into the iPhone browser.

That's why I created AirLink. AirLink was a web application consisting of a bookmarklet for desktop and a iOS web app.
To send a page from desktop to mobile, one would just click the bookmarklet in the desktop browser and then open the AirLink app on the phone.
Voilà: The page magically opens, eliminating the need to type in the url manually.

Although I made the app for myself in the first place, some people had similar problems and used AirLink on a daily basis. It also got featured on TUAW, TechGravy and some other blogs.
There's even a video review, in case you want to see AirLink in action.

On running your own service

Running AirLink turned out to be more work than building it in the first place. During it's two years of operation, almost 6000 people used AirLink regularly. This might seem small by internet standards, but is quite a thing if you're 17 years old and school is your main job.
When I started studying in 2012, I decided to close AirLink instead of having to neglect support and development.

AirLink was a fantastic learning experience. I'm still very thankful to everyone who used the service and donated to help me cover server costs.