StretchLink 1.0 (http://stretchlinkapp.com) is a new URL utility for Mac OS X. It was developed exclusively for expanding shortened URLs, removing redirects, and cleaning out referrer junk so that you can share URL without any baggage.

Whether you're sending links to friends or publishing a blog, you want to protect your friends and readers from redirects and privacy issues that can be caused by unintentionally publishing a shortened link. StretchLink runs in the OS X menu bar. Click the icon to open the main panel from which it can expand and clean links on demand with a single click, or can be set to silently watch your clipboard.

URLs that you copy from the web, emails, Twitter clients, or anywhere on your system are instantly converted to reveal their actual destination, with unnecessary query strings (the ?blabla=bergybergy stuff that Google, Twitter, Facebook, and others use to track clicks) removed. By the time you go to paste into an email, a blog post, a new Tweet, (or anywhere), you'll get the URL you wanted, not the one that redirects through Twitter or Facebook, then sends information to Google, and then (maybe) finally gets to where you wanted to go.

StretchLink 1.0 costs US$1.99. An introductory sale of $0.99 (50% off) will take place through the month of May.