It's a 128 bit number. If you express that number in base 62 (26 upper case letters + 26 downcase letters + 10 digits) you need only a bit more than 20 characters. You can compress it further by increasing the base and using other 8 bit ASCII characters.
Crockford base32 [0] is the best compromise, IMO. Reasonable length of 26 chars. Uses only alphanumeric characters and avoids issues with case sensitivity and confusing characters (0 vs O, etc.).
