Chris wrote:
I know this reply is, like, 3 years late, but with many online stores (and online newspapers, etc) the URL can be reduced to almost the domain name plus a number; in this case:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1902419553/
These sites tend to add a readable description (in this case the book title) so that if you are browing your History you can tell what it was you were looking at; it also make the link look more "friendly"; they also add lots of guff them helps them track where links originated from which is what the "ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1225978095&sr=8-1" bit is probably about (except the UTF8 part, which is the encoding)
So you don't always have to use tinyurl (but sometimes it is easier!)