This is a brilliant idea.
The web service TinyURL allows you to take really long URLs and convert them into much shorter ones. This makes it a lot easier, for example, to send links to people via e-mail, where long URLs tend to get munged by e-mail clients.
This is only one of many possible uses, this is a great, flexible service. You can get a feel for how it works right here:
If you’ve ever tried to cut-and-paste directions to someplace out of Yahoo! Maps and into an e-mail message, you now know a better way.