expand a bit.ly URL to its original URL. Need a bit.ly developer account to use this.

expand-bitly

#!/bin/bash

# change these to your own
export userid=<user_id_string_from_bitly_account>
export key=<key string_from_bitly_account>

export link=$1

if [[ "$link" == '' ]]
then
    echo usage: $0 '<link>'
    exit -1
fi

export expand="http://api.bit.ly/v3/expand?shortUrl=$link&login=$userid&apiKey=$key&format=txt"

wget -q --output-document=temp.txt.$$ $expand
cat temp.txt.$$
/bin/rm temp.txt.$$

Here's another way, from user atoponce at commandlinefu.com, using a service of longurl.org:

expandurl() { curl -s "http://api.longurl.org/v2/expand?url=${1}&format=php" | awk -F '"' '{print $4}' }