chirbit blog

Today I created a new category that may be of use for the Haitian relief effort. I am calling it the “support” category, and the icon is a little life saver. If anyone can think of any other meta fields that may be useful for this let me know and I will try to add it in.

The idea is that perhaps there are folks in Haiti with family abroad, but with no means of communication. Recording stations can be set up to record messages from survivors to their families abroad. This can be accomplished from a laptop or even just a phone (iphone/blackberry). A location can be logged in a metatag and an extended text area with Names, or other information can also be added. Sort of like an audio version of the CNN iReport “I’m Alive: Messages from Haiti.”

I’ve created a video showing how to edit metatags for a chirbit post. If this is useful in any way please let me know. Thank You,

Ivan

• CNN iReport – I’m alive: Messages from Haiti – CNN iReport posts video of survivors in Haiti.
• Looking for loved ones in Haiti – Name Database
• Red Cross Locate your relatives in Haiti link
• Connect with your loved ones in Haiti – Missing people list
• Earthquake Haiti facebook page

I am very excited about the new top 100 chirbits page. It will update nightly.
I am working on more features and a better layout, but I wanted to get this posted.
Congratulations to Gyant [@gyant] from Gyant Unplugged for the top post with over 7500 views so far.
The other 4 in the top ten include Steve Shore [@steveshore] from the 88.5 Way Early Show in Fort Myers, Florida,
Guilherme Briggs [@guilhermebriggs] from Teatro de Bonecos in Rio de Janeiro,
and Corny Koehl [@CornyKoehl] from Oprah Radio/The Gayle King Show. We love you all!
There are so many cool uses that our users are finding for Chirbit! Keep it up and let me know if there is anything that I can do to make it more simple, useful and fun!
The Top 100 Chirbit Posts

Chirbit is an easy and fun way to share audio on any social network, but for this post I am going to focus specifically on Twitter. Follow these easy steps and you will be sharing audio on Twitter like a pro!

Part 1 – How to share your Chirbit audio on Twitter

1. Sign up for a Chirbit account. All you need is a username, a valid email address and your password. You can sign up to chirbit here.
2. Post your audio. This can be accomplished in a number of different ways with Chirbit.
   • You can record your message straight from the browser using the Chirbit recorder, and your microphone or webcam.

   

   • You can upload an mp3, wav or m4a file using the upload form.

   

   • You can record your audio using your iphone voice memo app and submit it from your iphone ( This is the perfect way to post your audio on the go )

   

3. Click on the Option button on your Chirbit post.



4. Click the Tweet This Chirbit button. The “Tweet This” button will post your short URL and the Title you gave your Chirbit on your Twitter account. Currently you must be logged in to Twitter and you must click the update button manually for this to function. In the near future you will be able to choose to do this automatically for all of your posts via the settings area.

The short Chirbit URL look like this http://chirb.it/****** (the chirb.it domain followed by 6 alphanumeric characters) and will appear this way to you viewers:

On an iphone your chirbit will look like this:

Part 2 – How others are using Chirbit to share audio on Twitter

Check out how others are using Chirbit with Twitter by searching twitter with the term “chirb.it”

Some examples of Chirbit posts

• Poetry Nystagmus by Lloyd Fletcher
• Short Snippets from a longer Podcast Jeff Thinks He Has the Bird Flu… Riiight
• Your favorite Movie Quote The Snozzberries taste like Snozzberries!
• Audio Tweets Crazy golf
• Share music you’ve made Melancholie
• Sound Bites Charlie ringtone
• Pronunciations How do you pronounce Che?

logos /ˈloʊɡɒs/ or /ˈlɒgɒs/; the word or form which expresses a thought. The written word in action.

In 1999 I had an idea to create a website where people could upload mp3 or real audio versions of public domain books. The idea was for anyone to take text from Project Gutenberg and record it digitally then upload the file for public use. Primarily for people with disability (sight or Dyslexia) or for anyone listening to it on a computer (this was pre iPod as the first iPod was not released until October 23, 2001).

Project Gutenberg as it appeared in May of 2000

This was 5 years before LibriVox. In 1999 bandwidth and encoding where not trivial, and the idea of user generated content was not as wide spread as it is today.
I let the domain go in 2004. ( I am not sure what the current logosproject.org will be. There is place holder text there now.) I stumbled upon the archive.org wayback machine files of logosproject.org while thinking about chirbit and the direction that I see it going. I am excited about chirbit as a hub of user created audio awesomeness, and am even more excited about this and other ideas coming to fruition after long periods of germination (thoughts made into action). My hope is that chirbit is simple, useful and fun to all who use it. – Ivan