UncrasomaticHave you ever gotten a "shortened" url, but were suspicious of where it actually goes? There's services that can decode it for you, to tell you where the link goes without you having to click yourself. http://wheregoes.com/ is one of those services.
"Short" urls were initially nice, you could have a memorable word as a shortcut, or save space transmitting in a medium with limited bandwidth. More often than not these days they're just ugly, annoying, privacy-hijacking, and obfuscating.