by Mike Disher
This week we're talking about something that is a really cool tool, that we're just learning about but seems to have the potential to offer some amazing benefits. Officially its name is IFTTT: IFTTT is an Web 2.0 tool and also an abbreviation for “IF THIS THEN THAT”
When people talk about IFTTT, they usually make it a single word that sounds like the words rift, gift, lift...except without the first letter. So just ‘ift’. (maybe that will make it easier to read?!)
Using IFTTT, you can create powerful connections between your various social and productivity apps where some action is taken with or without your involvement based on a trigger that you define.
The things you might want to connect in some way are called CHANNELS in the IFTTT world. LinkedIn is a channel, Twitter is a channel, Boxcar, BuzzFeed, Craigslist, your iPhone Photo app, etc. As of this writing, there are 77 CHANNELS that IFTTT works with.
The simplified concept of IFTTT is that when something happens, called a “TRIGGER”, on one of your channels, something called an “ACTION” takes place.
So then IF a TRIGGER(THIS), THEN an ACTION (THAT)!
The whole process happens based on a process you get to define called a RECIPE. (BTW - to take this cooking thing a little further, they actually refer to the pieces of information used in your trigger to be INGREDIENTS!) In your recipe you select your channels, define your triggers, direct what action should take place, and on what channel that action should happen. There are all sorts of predefined recipes out there, and you can use those, or create your own!
How about an example? Okay...here’s one. There’s lots of times that one of my LinkedIn connections gets a promotion or changes jobs. Sometimes I want to send them a note to say congratulations...other times I don’t. I want to be timely if I do, however, and I don’t always check in on LinkedIn every day.
Using IFTTT, I can create a recipe that checks my LinkedIn ‘stream’ (LinkedIn is one Channel). Every time one of my connections posts a new job (that would be my Trigger), an email (Another Channel) is sent to me. Then I can decide if I want to send an email or not and do it right away.
There are so many variations as to what you can do with IFTTT it's impossible to cover all the possibilities here, but I’d sure encourage you to check it out.
Here are a few interesting 'Recipes' that I've seen:
1. When I post my status to Facebook, copy it with the date to my Evernote Diary
2. If it gets dark (when the sun goes down), turn on the lights
3. If I "like" a song on SoundCloud, download it to my Dropbox
4. If there is a new featured recipe, deliver it to my inbox
etc.
As you can imagine, the possibilities are endless and growing every day.
A couple of words of warning, however!
1. You have to allow IFTTT access to your channels (the ones you include in recipes)
2. I don’t know what the security implications of this are as I’ve not investigated that at all yet...so use at your own risk!
Sources:
https://ifttt.com/
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Check back with http://dishtech.weebly.com weekly as we present “THE DISH” on topics of interest for the technology curious!
This week we're talking about something that is a really cool tool, that we're just learning about but seems to have the potential to offer some amazing benefits. Officially its name is IFTTT: IFTTT is an Web 2.0 tool and also an abbreviation for “IF THIS THEN THAT”
When people talk about IFTTT, they usually make it a single word that sounds like the words rift, gift, lift...except without the first letter. So just ‘ift’. (maybe that will make it easier to read?!)
Using IFTTT, you can create powerful connections between your various social and productivity apps where some action is taken with or without your involvement based on a trigger that you define.
The things you might want to connect in some way are called CHANNELS in the IFTTT world. LinkedIn is a channel, Twitter is a channel, Boxcar, BuzzFeed, Craigslist, your iPhone Photo app, etc. As of this writing, there are 77 CHANNELS that IFTTT works with.
The simplified concept of IFTTT is that when something happens, called a “TRIGGER”, on one of your channels, something called an “ACTION” takes place.
So then IF a TRIGGER(THIS), THEN an ACTION (THAT)!
The whole process happens based on a process you get to define called a RECIPE. (BTW - to take this cooking thing a little further, they actually refer to the pieces of information used in your trigger to be INGREDIENTS!) In your recipe you select your channels, define your triggers, direct what action should take place, and on what channel that action should happen. There are all sorts of predefined recipes out there, and you can use those, or create your own!
How about an example? Okay...here’s one. There’s lots of times that one of my LinkedIn connections gets a promotion or changes jobs. Sometimes I want to send them a note to say congratulations...other times I don’t. I want to be timely if I do, however, and I don’t always check in on LinkedIn every day.
Using IFTTT, I can create a recipe that checks my LinkedIn ‘stream’ (LinkedIn is one Channel). Every time one of my connections posts a new job (that would be my Trigger), an email (Another Channel) is sent to me. Then I can decide if I want to send an email or not and do it right away.
There are so many variations as to what you can do with IFTTT it's impossible to cover all the possibilities here, but I’d sure encourage you to check it out.
Here are a few interesting 'Recipes' that I've seen:
1. When I post my status to Facebook, copy it with the date to my Evernote Diary
2. If it gets dark (when the sun goes down), turn on the lights
3. If I "like" a song on SoundCloud, download it to my Dropbox
4. If there is a new featured recipe, deliver it to my inbox
etc.
As you can imagine, the possibilities are endless and growing every day.
A couple of words of warning, however!
1. You have to allow IFTTT access to your channels (the ones you include in recipes)
2. I don’t know what the security implications of this are as I’ve not investigated that at all yet...so use at your own risk!
Sources:
https://ifttt.com/
- - - - - - - - - -
Check back with http://dishtech.weebly.com weekly as we present “THE DISH” on topics of interest for the technology curious!