title: Encoding a hash to fit in less space
body: <p>Whats the smallest hash I can get without making things overly collidable? I figure a good example is hashing "foo".</p>
  
  <pre><code>input = foo
  sha1 = 0beec7b5ea3f0fdbc95d0dd47f3c5bc275da8a33
  sha1 + b64 = C+7Hteo/D9vJXQ3UfzxbwnXaijM
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Are there any other standards out there like Base64 that utilize unicode characters? maybe including upper/lower umlaut characters such as Ü and ü to pack more bits into each character? Ideally I'd love to compress the sha1 hash into 4-6 unicode characters I can tack onto a URL.</p>