Untiny: Retrieve The Original URL From A Shortened URL

The term db is shorthand for Data Base.

A proxy is a means of bypassing network censorship. Some countries don't allow internet access to certain sites, including Google. Many schools (at least here in the US)often block access to services like MySpace because the students access it during classes. Some internet providers block access to some websites. Some businesses block access to various sites.

Some countries, in addition to blocking certain sites, also block URL shortening services, such as tinyurl.
What Untiny does is retrieve the original long URL. If URL shortening sites are blocked, you need the original URL to be able to go to the site.
A shortened URL is just a handful of letters - there's no way to tell where they link to by looking at them. They form a link to somewhere, but if the shortened URL site is blocked, you don't know where it points to.

The supported sites at Untiny are the URL shortening services (such as tinyurl) that Untiny can retrieve the long URL's from.
Untiny does this without interfering with the proxy you are (presumably)using.

Proxies are often web sites you can use to surf the internet anonymously, and there is also proxy software that you install that serves the same purpose.

Some of the proxy servers are fine to use, and others are portals that capture any data you send - filling out forms, filling in passwords to web sites, what sites you visit, etc.

Wikipedia has a clear overview of proxies, what they are, what they do, and what type they are.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_proxy

Shortened links (and link shortening services) are used to turn very long links into very small ones. Some links are so long that they "wrap" inside an email or other program, not fitting on one line. Email programs often don't recognize a link that is longer than one line. If you click on one of those links, it doesn't take you where you need to go. It only includes the first line of the link and that usually ends up with a page error in your browser.
Some people have resorted to copying the first line of the link, pasting it into a browser window, and then copying the second line and pasting it into the browser window at the end of the first line.
It works, but its awkward.

I wouldn't want anyone to feel ignorant - all areas of life have their own shorthand, and some of that shorthand would fill a book. No one can keep up with them all or learn them all. Certainly not me, I look up stuff all the time that I don't know.
In this case, the error is mine - sometimes my brain thinks that if I know something, then everybody knows it. =O

The site doesn't say how the shortened links are converted. No indication if there's a db or some other method.
There's a link to email the developer at the site if you want to ask.