URL Shortener Services (like bit.ly)
I know we talked about that alongside in this thread and I don't want to push anything. But I stumbled on this list of URL shortener services with API support and thought it deserves its own thread.
See this thread as a scource to find (a) suitable service(s) when you have time for this to implement. Those shorten URLs should help when there is limited space available for messages (like MicroBlogs) and maybe help to increase the "stickyness-rate" for blog commenting for example. To my knowledge all(?!) of them should work with 301 redirect so SEs will read the original URL.