Can you tell me? ANSWERS

Last week I asked:

Can you tell me...in Twitter, how can I shorten my links? I've seen tweets with truncated links but have no idea how to do it myself.

I got some great answers from some great people. I was assuming there was some function of Twitter I was missing, I never considered using an outside source for link shortening. The most popular recommendation was for bit.ly. Two others mentioned were TinyURL and HootSuite. They all work basically the same way - you imput a link and it will spit out a shortened version for you.

I couldn't figure out HootSuite - it does much more then shorten links and I think you have to create a user name and password. I did try out bit.ly and TinyURL though. I started with the link for my lastest review for The Gardener:

http://redhousebooks.blogspot.com/2010/06/book-review-gardener-by-sa-bodeen.html

Here is what each site shortened it to:

bit.ly -- http://bit.ly/bxG7fH

TinyURL -- http://tinyurl.com/2fh593y

Isn't that cool? How did I not know of this?
A big thank you to everyone who answered! You guys are the best!!