A new URL shortener

Blocking the flash plugin in FF(as I am confident many here do), results in a black "click to activate" box, which overlays the generated URL and effectively renders the service unusable.

Entering ycombinator.com yields "The url format is invalid.", which may be technically correct, but is not very user friendly. On the other hand other URLs like mailto:a@b.c or steam://run/212680 are accepted, I am undecided if one would want that.

The site is down. Not a good start. Why do we need a new URL shortener anyway?