::Chilp it! blog::

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.

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.