::The Chilp blog::

We just had an unplanned and very spontaneous 7 minute (21.00-21.07 GMT+1) downtime. All systems are up and running again and we are looking into it.

Cheers.

[Update: We had some issues with the network connectivity which are fixed now.]

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.

Twitter is not showing any question marks in Twitter Search anymore which made our Chilp.it links break if accessed via the search.

Take a look here: http://twitter.com/Chilp/status/3145914555 (with question mark)

In the search: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=fdsfetgfdfasfgfdgeggaeg (without question mark)

We opened a ticket regarding this issue and also updated Chilp.it to work without question marks too to make all broken links work again after all.
This update has been deployed very quickly and everything seems to work fine despite Twitter’s inability to display question marks via their search interface.

Twitter will hopefully fix this soon.

[Update: Twitter fixed this issue and closed our open ticket without further explanation.]

[Update II: Twitter only fixed it half since posts are able to contain “?” again but old ones are still broken. We reopened the ticket.]

[Update III: Twitter closed the ticket without a corresponding comment. We reopened it again since the problem is still there.]

[Update IV: Twitter “solved” the problem by deleting the post from the search index. Sigh. http://search.twitter.com/search?q=fdsfetgfdfasfgfdgeggaeg]

I give up.

Our site may be slower than it should be due to routing issues at the DE-CIX (German Commercial Internet Exchange).
Our provider is aware of this and is taking action.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

[Update: All problems solved.]

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

Dear all,

our provider informed us about an important network maintenance happening  on the 28th of May 2009 between 03.00 and 03.30 (GMT+1) which might cause brief interruptions.

These interruptions are indeed supposed to be very short and should not be longer than a few seconds.
Most Chilp it! users will not even notice these upgrades.
Well, if you’re running into timeouts feel free to try again after a few seconds.

We like to apologize in advance for any inconvenience this might cause.

Anyway, keep on shortening and 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!

You may have the need to convert regular web addresses into shorter URLs within your docs automatically.
Get ready,  it’s fairly simple to setup and way easier than you think.

Log into Google Docs, create a new document or open an existing one and use the following formula for shortening:

=importData(concatenate(“http://chilp.it/api.php?url=”,A2))

Copy the formula and paste it into the fields you want to use.

You need to change the field “A2” to the corresponding long URL field. After entering the long URL in the chosen field, the magic happens and the formula creates a short URL.

Your done. Easy does it.

:-)

Let us know if you’re having trouble setting this up.

Welcome to our blog!

We’d like to inform you about our fine Chilp it! URL shortener, share some ideas and get involved in great conversations.
Stay tuned!

Thanks for stopping by,
it’s a pleasure to have you here!

Cheers,
your Chilp it! team