I first looked at IFTTT – ‘If This, Then That’ when a fantastic plugin I used called ’LinkedIn Include’ – which pulled your articles (not your profile or stream) from LinkedIn onto your WordPress site – was eventually blocked by LinkedIn (hey –ho!).
I discovered that IFTTT is quite frankly – brilliant!
IFTTT has a bank of prepared ‘Recipes’ you can use, or you can make your own. A Recipe is a connection between products or Apps. Recipes come in two types: DO and IF. DO Recipes run on your device triggered by personalized button – you can do things like; trigger a call to get you out of a meeting (US only); email someone to let them know you are on your way home; turn up the heating for when you get home! IF Recipes run automatically in the background and are connections between Apps, If this (ie a Twitter action), then that (ie a Dropbox action).
I wanted to do more on Instagram, and I’m not a great self publicist, but I am working on a long-term project for myself I’ve called #treetwoproject so that seemed the perfect way for me to use IFTTT. So I take a picture of a wonderful Oak tree on my morning walk – which I will eventually present animating to show how the countryside in that snapshot changes. From Instagram I run three IFTTT ‘Recipes’, one posts the picture I have taken as a native Twitter image (everyone should do this), one sends the posted image to my Dropbox, the last puts it onto Pinterest (this one is a bit flaky).
OK – that’s good, but what else can it do?
Well, pretty much anything when you have two Apps that are connected to you!
For example in your home you can:
- Talk to your iRobot Roomba – hoover the lounge please!
- Turn off the heating
- Turn on the lights
- Wake up! Unmute your ringer in the morning
For work you can:
- News – get alerts on trends, collect it, email it, send it to Slack …
- Collect Tweets or blog posts from a particular user to a Google spreadsheet
- Set up a Twitter search for key phrases like ‘I need a graphic designer’
- Send an Instagram post as a native Tweet (my #treetwoproject)
- Google Calendar appointments can be sent as text alerts
- If you are following a particular hashtag, when it’s used, have that user added to a Twitter list
- Send your WordPress posts to LinkedIn
- Create scheduled and recurring Trello cards
It’s a bit like a little bit of AI in your life!