Here are the requirements:
Must be alphanumeric, 8-10 characters so that it is user friendly. These will be stored as unique keys in database. I am using Guids as primary keys so an option to use GUids to generate these unique Ids would be preferable.
I am thinking on the lines of a base-n converter that takes a Guid and converts to an 8 character unique string.
Short, light-weight algorithm preferred as it would be called quite often.
You might consider base 36. in that it can do letters and numbers. Consider removing I (eye) and O (Oh) from your set so they don’t get mixed up with 1 (one) and 0 (zero). Some people might complain about 2 and Z as well.