Tools I use: IFTTT (If This Then That)

Last Updated on August 13th, 2013

Think about this: it is so hot outside that your cat, in the house, is pleading for some cold air. Unfortunately, there’s no one home, what do yo do? Well, you setup an IFTTT recipe so that if the temperature is too high, it turns on the fan in your home. Oh, the things we do for our cats!

Obviously, though, I am not writing this to help you keep your cat in shape. Or not only for this (note to myself: write a blogpost about our cat!).

So, did you know about ifttt? Or, the longer name, If This Then That? It’s an automation service: it takes specific actions and executes them on specific triggers. I started using it recently (about 6 months ago) and here are some tasks that happen currently over some of my accounts:

1. If I post a link on my Facebook account, it automatically goes to my Twitter account
2. If I upload an image on Facebook, it uploads it automatically on my Dropbox account
3. If I send self emails which usually means something I want to remember, it saves it in Evernote
4. If I publish a new blog post on this blog, it saves the content on Evernote

There are several more, usually to save things to my Evernote or Dropbox accounts.

Among the things you could do, though, if you want to:

1. Update profile photo on Twitter when you change it on Facebook
2. If it’s going to rain tomorrow, send me an email! (or an SMS)
3. Text to IFTTT to fake a Phone Call
4. If Hell freezes over then email me

There are lots and lots of “recipes” (this is how they call the automations), you can see a list of the most popular here. There is a list of funny ones on Mashable, also.

The “channels” you can use to create recipes with include, among others: Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Dropbox, Evernote, 500px, iPhone Photo Stream, WordPress blogs, New York Times, ESPN, Pocket aso. The full list of “channels” is here.

P.S.: they recently launched their iPhone App, which I didn’t have time to test yet.