chirbit blog » Chirbit

Chirbit Summer Update No. 1 – Plugins Galore!

ivan — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 03:48:43 +0000

It’s the middle of summer and things are heating up at Chirbit!
I’ve been working on some graphic clean ups, but the big updates have been in the plugin department.

Chirbit Wordpress Plugin

Last month I released the Wordpress Chirbit Plugin. It enables you to embed your chirbit post easily on your Wordpress blog/site. To embed a chirbit post in your blog all you need is the plugin and the short URL for your chirbit.

Example:
[ chirbit: http://chirb.it/ghcKkPL ]

If you use it please send feedback and feature suggestions for the next version!

You can download the plugin here.

Chirbit BBCode Plugin

Rick Strife created a BBCode plugin for embeding your chirbit posts easily in a Bulletin Board that is BBCode enhanced.

To embed a chirbit in a bulletin board post all you have to do is use Rick’s plugin, your chirbit short URL and the simple BBCode.
Bulletin Board Code as you may know is a way to enhance posts without using HTML.

Here are a few links about BBCode:

Chirbit OpenVBX Plugin

Mr. Andrew Watson of OtherNumber created the Chirbit plugin for Twilio’s OpenVBX platform.
It enables you to post to chirbit from your OpenVBX system.
You can download the Chirbit OpenVBX plugin here:

Chirbit is a great alternative to Snapvine! Check us out.

admin — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 19:27:18 +0000

Snapvine is no longer. So where can you go to record audio messages to share on Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz and pretty much anywhere online? Look no further than chirbit!

Here are just some of the features that chirbit offers!

Record audio straight from your browser using a webcam or microphone.
Upload existing audio files in wav, mp3, m4a or amr formats!
Upload to your chirbit account using a smart phone with a built in voice memo recorder.
Geotag your audio posts to let others know where you recorded them! (optional)
Categorize your chirbits into fun categories like “Joke”, “Rave”, or “My 2 cents”
Leave private audio messages to your friends.
Share your chirbits easily on Twitter, Facebook or Google Buzz with one click!

Feel free to contact me directly if there is any feature that you need or would like to see on chirbit and I will do my best to implement it!
I hope to inspire the users of chirbit to this kind of love, support and dedication!

Chirbit at the 2010 Dallas International Film Festival

ivan — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 22:24:44 +0000

The guys from The Integrated Agency are representing Chirbit at the 2010 Dallas International Film Festival, this week and next. They have set up a table in the Director’s lounge, and you can check in to the Dallas Film Society’s Chirbit account to listen to updates and perhaps an interview or two with the film makers.

More Chirbit Follow Me Buttons

ivan — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 22:33:02 +0000

More Follow Me on Chirbit” Buttons!

Follow Me on Chirbit Buttons!

ivan — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 21:06:07 +0000

I made some “Follow Me on Chirbit” Buttons today. I thought I’d put them here first. Let me know if you like them. I will try to post some other styles as well, as I make them.
I’ll put the embed code up soon.

How to post a chirbit and edit it’s location and notes metatags.

admin — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 06:10:04 +0000

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

The Top 100 Chirbit Posts page

ivan — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:43:21 +0000

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 Ideas and Tips

admin — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 23:46:33 +0000

Every so often I’ll post a Chirbit Idea on Twitter. Here is a collection of the 13 I’ve posted so far. If you have a cool Chirbit Idea send it in! or share it on twitter with the #chirbit hashtag.

Tell a joke like @smouty66 http://chirb.it/a0nFzD
You can record a chribit straight from your browser using a mic or a webcam for up to 2 minutes
Audacity is your friend – http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ – free open source recording and editing app
Post your favorite movie quote and share it! http://chirb.it/t0y8OO – We are the music makers, the dreamers of the dreams
Take some weight off of your shoulders. Apologize to someone http://chirb.it/3qG5mO
Read a poem to someone – http://chirb.it/JGxpqk – T. S. Eliot’s – The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
How do you pronounce that? If you know another language or a hard to pronounce word. Share it. http://chirb.it/sHD7ND
Click the little gear icon to access additional tools. Edit, reply to, delete a chirbit or get a short URL.
Show off your awesome voice like Bryan Cox @coxtox http://chirb.it/5CMeNA
You can search for chirbits by keyword, description and category then share them easily on twitter with our short URLs
To see how others are sharing audio on twitter with chirbit search twitter with keyword ‘chirb.it‘ (our short URL)
What is your favorite quote or saying? Record it and share it.
If you want to use a high quality USB mic with chirbit, right click on the recorder to change your input device.

Tweet this audio – How to share Chirbit audio on Twitter

ivan — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 15:02:05 +0000

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

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

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?

chirbit’s seed idea – logosproject.org (c. 1999)

ivan — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 01:28:22 +0000

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