On the Quate Newsnet site, there's this handy little tutorial (from Chris) with a look at creating shorter URLs with the help of PHP - that is, "page.php?1&2" versus "page.php?id=1&page=2".
This script is useful for those who can't use a htaccess file for one reason or another. (Some hosting providers do not allow htaccess use.) Also useful for those PHP developers who are striving to create a very universal program, and want to offer shorter URLs without the requirement of the user having to use a htaccess file.
The actual PHP code for it is pretty simple, grabbing everything from the query string and splitting it out on the ampersands (&). You'd need to know exactly what order to put the parameters in, though, since it doesn't use the normal $_GET functionality to assign it to an array.