There’s an experimental version of a “shortlink” service available now on the anorak. Simply paste in your oversized URI (newspeak for URL) and hit the button, and you’ll short link in the form of http://theanorak.org/link/?q=xx. To try it out, point your browser here.
Why would you use this? Well, have you had emails with long-ish hyperlinks in them which have wrapped onto a second line and no longer work? Where you have to cut & paste both bits into the address bar of your browser?