Normul normalizes URLs. It expands shortened URLs:
>>> from normul import normul
>>> normul('http://bit.ly/1I4VQ')
{'type': 'other', 'normalized': 'http://www.shinguz.ch/MySQL/mysql_mv.html', 'original': 'http://bit.ly/1I4VQ'}
And shows useful links for hosted-images:
>>> normul('http://yfrog.com/6c5krj')
{'image': {'full': 'http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/1079/5kr.jpg', 'thumbnail': 'http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/1079/5kr.th.jpg'}, 'type': 'image', 'original': 'http://yfrog.com/6c5krj', 'normalized': 'http://yfrog.com/6c5krj'}
You can find the simple but convenient sourcecode here.