With TinyURL, when you submit a gigantic URL, it generates a random six-character code and links it to that URL in a table. Then, when users click that TinyURL link or enter it into a browser, they go to the TinyURL site, which looks up the longer URL and redirects them to the original longer URL.

TinyURL is one of several link-shrinking applications available. An easy-to-use bookmarklet is available so you don’t have to keep visiting TinyURL every time you want to shrink a link. ♦♦♦♦

TwitterKeys enhances twitter conversations by replacing words with UTF8 compatible images saving valuable character space and having fun at the same time. Outrageously popular. ♦♦♦♦♦

BigTweet - BigTweet installs as a bookmarklet and allows you to post to Twitter from any web page.

Features:

• login with Twitter credentials
• choose 140 or 240 characters for length of tweet
• shorten URLs using Bit.ly API
• insert special Unicode characters

The Good:

Big Tweet is a great way to create a tweet about web pages that you visit. It is an easy-to-use widget with many features: choose a classic 140 character update, or a 240 character tweet; Insert special Unicode characters and shorten URLs with the Bit.ly API right from the bookmarklet window and automatically capture the current page title, URL and any highlighted text. No registration is required - only Twitter login credentials are needed.

The Not-so-Good:

Big Tweet is a brilliant little widget. In the past, the only odd thing we encountered was that, on occasion, the widget would get “buried” under some graphics on a few websites. That could have been a Firefox thing; we’re not sure. It didn’t happen very often, and appears to have been fixed, so we can’t really complain too much.

Tweetwave.com rates it: ★★★★