URL shorteners are bullshit, no one should ever use them. Progress on the URL front is to make them human readable and less obfuscated. It is easier to type five english words and a domain name than five meaningless letters and numbers, plus they tell the user where they're going.
For example, I bet you don't appreciate clicking on this link: http://bit.ly/f4OF , whereas http://www.1man1jar.com/ tells you everything you need to know, and it's easier to transfer from a piece of paper to your short term memory to the URL bar in your web browser.
How is this supposed to produce any sensible result, since their testing servers are in vastly different locations than anyone's desktop? Their testing server can't even REACH the caching resolver running on my home gateway, and even if it could, it would be many more network hops away from it than my PC is.
I realise running bind or djbdns' dnscche is not for everyone. However, even your ISP's DNS server will be much closer to you network wise and thus experience less latency. No one should ever use OpenDNS or Google DNS.
(reposted because comments from my old account are invisible)
For example, I bet you don't appreciate clicking on this link: http://bit.ly/f4OF , whereas http://www.1man1jar.com/ tells you everything you need to know, and it's easier to transfer from a piece of paper to your short term memory to the URL bar in your web browser.