::The Chilp blog::

Random fact: Since we are still providing a relatively open API we also need to fight a lot of spam. Even if we believe in the idea of openness it is sometimes not fully practical.

We decided to keep the open API for as long as we can but to also keep an eye on what’s going on. And, there’s a lot going on, in fact, there’s so much going on that we decided we have to put a spam and misuse detection in place that relies both on Google’s Safebrowsing API and our own detection routines. The filters are constantly learning and are getting better and better. The truth is: Blocking domains has never been our intention but we pretty much have no choice anymore.

Anyway, we are rather pleased with the results and hope you’re too.

If your site is blocked and you feel that it shouldn’t just drop us a line and we take a look. On the other hand: If you want to report spam or misuse please contact us via the abuse address or via Twitter.

Have a fine day. :-)

Great news, people!

Tweetdeck recently added support for custom url shorteners. What does that mean? Well, you can use our happy service now within Tweetdeck too.

How? Take a look at the explanation.

Just put in “http://chilp.it/api.php?url=%@” and start using Chilp.it with Tweetdeck now.

Have fun. :-)

Good news:

Starting from today, we’ll check every shortened URL against Google’s constantly updated blacklists of suspected phishing and malware pages.

What does this mean? Well, check it out…

…here are some of the things we can do with the Safe Browsing API:

• Warn users before clicking on links that lead to malware-infested pages.
• Check pages against Google’s lists of suspected phishing and malware pages.

Hu? Try me! http://chilp.it/malware

Joyeux Noël – Frohe Weihnachten – Merry Christmas!

:-)

Since Twitter is just too slow fixing their bugs we rewrote our software and removed the “?” from the links. Links with “?” will still work but fresh ones will come without it. Please let us know if you stumble upon something odd. Cheers. :-)

Oh, and thanks for nothing Twitter.

Great!

The Prodigy used a link shortened with Chilp.it on their main site to promote a free Mp3 track from the 2009 Special Edition of their latest album “Invaders must die”.

We like that!

If you want to know how often the track has been downloaded you might just take a look here:

http://s.chilp.it/38e3d1

:-)

Did you know?

There is an easy way to directly shorten URLs out of Google Reader.
Just manually add Chilp.it and it will show up in the “Send to:” menu at the bottom of each item.

How? Well, try this:

1. Open Google Reader and click the settings page:

2. Select the “Send To” menu:

3. Click “Create a custom link” at the bottom of the page and add the Chilp.it settings:

Download settings here (.txt)

Done. You can now directly send items you like to share with others to Chilp.it for easy shortening. Just select “Send to” & “Chilp.it” at the bottom of an item in Google Reader and the URL will be directly processed. Easy, huh?

If you have any questions just drop us a line and we’ll get back to you.

Dear folks,

just to let you know,
everything is all good, the systems are up and running and we are even working on some exciting stuff.
The coffee is hot and so very tasty. :-)

Anyhow, our traffic is still doubling every month and we are quite happy to announce a lot more is coming from Iran these days. We even had our first click from South Korea and Saudi Arabia and we are very excited about that.

Still percentage-wise most of the clicks do come from the States even though Brazil and Germany are trying to catch up. Since Chilp is a german based company it’s no wonder Germany is quite high up in this list. We also have a lot of fans in Brazil which makes us proud too.

And yes, it’s fantastic to see China in the Top 5 click list:

1. United States
2. Germany
3. Brazil
4. China
5. Belgium

Happy clicking and thanks a lot for your support!

If you have a question just drop us a line and we’ll get in contact with you.
Have a fine day.

Cheers,
Zalt

Random fact:

The short URL for “About:Blank” has been clicked a couple of hundred times.
The question is only: Why?

:-)

http://s.chilp.it/?b1135a

Social media networks like Twitter.com are a fantastic way to share news, information or blog posts. Since every message has a maximum lenght of 140 characters the best way sharing links is with the help of URL shortening services.

This  php code adds a “Share this on Twitter” – shortcut to your WordPress site and helps creating short links on the fly.

Open your functions.php and paste this into the file:

function getchilpUrl($url) {
$chilpurl = file_get_contents(“http://chilp.it/api.php?url=”.$url);
return $chilpurl;
}

Paste this into your sidebar.php or wherever you like the link to appear:

<?php
$curl = getchilpUrl(get_permalink($post->ID));
echo ‘<a href=”http://twitter.com/home?status=I liked ‘.$curl.'” target=”_blank”><abbr title=”Share this on Twitter”>Share this on Twitter</abbr></a>’
?>

That’s it! :-)

The link will look like this:

It directs to Twitter and enables one to directly post that shorter link:

Feel free to use this script for developing other ways of integrating Chilp it! URL shortening into your website, blog or application. The script can also easily be  changed to support other social networks like Friendfeed or Facebook.

Have fun!