Like me, if you’ve ever wanted to use a Web Service from a site that doesn’t have that many code examples or a solid API, chances are you may have considered using cURL – a great extension to PHP that allows you to authenticate with websites just like a normal user would. The benefits of doing this are that you’re able to gain access to rich data sources like contact lists, email, statuses and a whole lot more. In this post I’m going to provide you with 20 code examples that’ll help you do some pretty cool things using everything from Bit.ly to Las.fm. Sites covered are Yahoo.com, Last.fm, Amazon, WordPress, Facebook, TwitPic, PayPal, Bit.ly, Twitter, GMail, MySpace, is.gd and IMDB.

1. How to shorten a URL through bit.ly
2. Get the trending topics on Twitter
3. How to get the album covers of your most recent tracks on Last.fm
4. Get the list of your Yahoo Contacts via cURL
5. How to get your very latest tweets
6. How to update your Twitter Status
7. How to upload files to Facebook
8. How to import your GMail Contacts
9. Upload files using Amazon S3 and PHP
10. How to login to mySpace through cURL
11. How to upload videos to YouTube (API reference)
12. How to make a post to WordPress
13. How to parse out a movie’s details using IMDB
14. How to Scape Bing.com for Search Results
15. How to update your Facebook status
16. How to upload a picture to TwitPic through cURL
17. How to process Payments using PayPal, cURL and CakePHP
18. Scrobble tracks to your Last.fm account using cURL
19. How to download videos in any format from YouTube
20. How to shorten a URL using the is.gd Shortening service
21. How to grab the number of subscribers from your Google Reader Account

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