It’s a bit.ly API Contest!
When we held our last API contest back in January of 2009, we were thoroughly impressed by the clever, inventive and generally rad submissions we received. Since then, we’ve added loads of new features and endpoints to our API, including some user-level OAuth endpoints we wrote about here.
Sooooooooo… we’ll be officially kicking off another bit.ly API contest at the next installment of our hackabit hackathon on Wednesday October 20th, for which you can register here. The prizes are awesome and plentiful. Behold:
* 1st prize (1) Makerbot Thing-O-Matic 3D Printer
* 2nd prize (3) 1TB USB hard drive enclosed in a vintage nintendo game (Zelda, Metroid, etc)
* 3rd prize (5) Set of BuckyBalls magnetic building spheres
Lest you doubt the majesty of the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic, check out this timelapse video of an older MakerBot printing the Statue of Liberty:
We encourage you to come up with creative and unexpected uses for the bit.ly API, but here are some suggestions to get you started:
* A mobile client for sharing and tracking bit.ly links
* A Wordpress plugin that turns all the links on a blog into bit.ly links and tracks them
* An application comparing metrics for multiple users
* An easy way to share bit.ly links via text message for mobie users
* A widget for displaying bit.ly metrics on a webpage
* A mobile application that reads and/or displays bit.ly’s new QR codes
Our API is documented in full at http://api.bit.ly. If you want access to register an OAuth application, or have any questions, please feel free to contact us at api@bit.ly. We will be concluding the API contest at another hackabit Hackathon on Wednsday, November 17th. Please send all submissions to contest@bit.ly, and feel free to discuss your projects in the comments here, in our API discussion group, or on the message board for our hackabit hackathons.
Good luck!
NOTE: The deadline for the API Contest has been extended to 12 Noon ET on Monday 11/22
2 years ago