How often do you get an e-mail from a friend that contains a URL, and the address takes up more than one line? It’s a pain to get that cut and pasted into your web browser, and sometimes it just doesn’t work. That’s why it’s helpful to have a “URL-shortening” service on hand — these sites will take your impossibly long URL and shorten it to a manageable length. These sites will store the longer URLs (most of them indefinitely) and will redirect you to the original site when you click on the shortened version.

If you’re interested in trying one of these services, check out the roundup of websites that shorten long URLs — it has a comparison chart and everything (Via Boing Boing)