url - Create Tinyurl style hash

Question

does anyone know of an algorithm that generates hashes that look like tinyurl hashes from a string (url)

I think the requirements would be

case sensitive short numbers and alphabets only anything else?

Answer 1

I don't think tinyurl hashes the strings; they have a database ID (1, 2, 3) which is coverted to base 36 (0-9A-Z): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_36