Good advice fqsbits!
Protecting the private key is indeed very important.
Generate it, store it safely and have backups.

If you're not sure how to do this or have found a good resource explaining how to do it feel free to comment here.

Thanks for the report, that's strange, will test on linux as well.

As for the 5 character address I don't know (the calculation is in the site, can't do it off the top of my head), but since it's still relatively short I'm guessing around 1 hour. For all address sizes we aim to calculate the address in less than 24h.

Thanks for the report, in my Firefox it works fine, could you tell me your Firefox version + OS?

Not all 7 character addresses are that expensive, some are more expensive to calculate than others (due to how bitcoin addresses are calculated). Best is indeed to start with a free address to see how it goes, these are not high priority so can take half an hour or so.

Hi,

One of the developers here - if you create the public/private key on your own computer, our service is 100% safe, guaranteed by math. There's a link to a youtube video showing how to generate this keypair, the video link is in the second step of creating a vanity address. (we'll put this and other videos on the frontpage asap).

It's good that you ask these questions, because any service not using split-key address generation is a security risk.
Generating the keypair in the browser (we also provide this for quick tests) is better, but not completely safe.

Read the other comments for people vouching for this method (we didn't invent this) and give it a try !

@twister

the form should look like this:


I requested the '1testing' vanity address.

On the next step of the form you should see the screen below, the arrow pointing to the field where you need to fill in your public key:

@Quartx
thanks for the explanation, everything 4 characters and under are free so those can be considered vouch copies

@Cyaren
Thanks for the kind words, and we'll have a look if we can format the emails a bit better. Thanks for the feedback!

@Catink
If you generate the keys yourself this is 100% safe (unless your computer is hacked/keylogged of course)
What do you mean with 'vouch copies' ?

Hi,

You can always check the price when entering your address, it's updated automatically for each letter and case sensitive/insensitive.
0.01 is our minimum price, case sensitive would've been the same price.

Thanks for trying and don't hesitate to order free addresses!

There are indeed two options, the one where you have to trust us and the security of our server is just there to quickly test the procedure or for small amount addresses.

In both cases, the private key we send you is not the final private key, you still have to combine it with your own private key. Since we don't have that one, your address is safe.
The combination procedure is described in the solution email. I suggest you try to order a free address to see how it all works

As Quartx said, split-key address generation protects you from us being malicious or hacked.
If you order an address there's a video explaining how to create a public/private key on your own machine, if you only send us the public key there's no way we can do something wrong. Security of your machine is then indeed the only risk.

Thanks for the question and let us know if something isn't clear!

We would like to present a secure and convenient service for Bitcoin vanity address creation: https://vante.me

What is a vanity address?

A vanity address is a Bitcoin address that starts with a specific pattern.
Example: 1VanteMe21JmABACJbp3pTSd89Ej9xmhUH

This service allows you to:
* Create bitcoin addresses containing your name or company in a completely secure way without having to trust any third party including ourselves.
* We provide a scalable solution which can provide more computing resources for bigger jobs, cutting down your waiting time (typically less than 1 day)
* Order a free vanity address up to 4 characters case (in)sensitive
* Order a paid vanity address up to 8 characters case (in)sensitive

Details:
We use split-key address generation as described in this post:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=81865.msg901491#msg901491

There are two options we provide:
- automatically generating a random keypair in your browser.
- create your own keypair on your machine, sending us only the public key.
Vanity addresses generated using this second option are 100% secure and guarantee you are the only owner of this address.
If this sounds complicated don't worry, there's an instruction video on the site.

Feedback and comments are welcome!

Zaterdag 26 maart 2016 vanaf 20u wordt de 40ste Bitcoin meet gehouden in Gent
Café Molotov, Voetweg 48, Gent

Dit is een informele meet, geen presentaties, beginners en gevorderden welkom!

zie ook: http://www.meetup.com/P2P-Gent/events/228855971/

BTC accepted !

Zaterdag 5 maart 2016 wordt de 39ste Bitcoin meet gehouden in Gent
Outpost Gamecenter Gent, Ottergemsesteenweg 13, Gent

Er zullen enkele presentaties gegeven worden door de deelnemers.

BTC accepted !

Zaterdag 5 december 2015 wordt de 33ste Bitcoin meet gehouden in Gent
Outpost Gamecenter Gent, Ottergemsesteenweg 13, Gent

Er zullen enkele presentaties gegeven worden door de deelnemers.

BTC accepted !

Zaterdag 7 november wordt de 32ste Bitcoin meet gehouden in Gent
Café Molotov, Voetweg 48, gent

BTC accepted !

In Gent zijn we erin geslaagd om 25 handelaars te overtuigen, niet in het minst vanwege het eenvoudige BitKassa systeem uit Arnhem.

Als jullie dus enkele handelaars willen overtuigen bekijk dit systeem zeker eens, de mensen erachter zullen jullie met plezier helpen!

meet wordt waarschijnlijk verzet naar 15 augustus, watch this space 

Thx for explaining the benefit of variance, this probably puts to bed an idea I had where miners wait 9 minutes after the last block (ignore for the moment that there's no universal time in bitcoin + dishonest miners) and then turn their miners on (this would make mining less costly).
 
What you're saying is that this scheme would have the effective variance of 1-minute blocks and thus be undesirable?
If anyone has a link to some 'non-napkin' graphs on this thanks in advance!

kleine correctie: Café Molotov

zie ook het kaartje met alle bitcoin accepterende zaken in Gent op www.gentbitcoinstad.be

Thanks for your support!
In the list of accepted exchangeproviders a fallback would indeed be a good idea.

Hope some other people will chime in on how to proceed.
Do I add a pull request for BIP 21 or write it up somewhere else and try to convince wallet makers?