My Quick Fix

Problem
I need to send a mate a link to an item on eBay after breaking his strimmer. The nice people at eBay have reworked their URL structure recently to improve SEO, so a link to a single item now looks something like this:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Medium-duty-bump-head-for-Kawasaki-brushcutter-strimmer_W0QQitemZ190302614007QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Home_Garden_GardenPowerTools_CA?hash=item2c4eeb71f7&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=65:12|66:2|39:1|72:1686|293:1|294:50
..which is not exactly Twitter, Live Messenger or email friendly. Long URLs break often in email and instant messengers when they ‘wrap’ at the end of a line (like the above is doing).
Solution
Here’s the old style linking system that still works: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=190302614007
So you can use that structure for a …