IFTTT Can Blow Your Mind

There are a lot of clever services on the Internet. Many are downright brilliant. IFTTT (pronounced “ift”) has one of the most inspired concepts on the web, and can be a very handy tool for you. IFTTT stands for “If This Then That.” IFTTT is a service for triggering automatic actions and information-flow between your most commonly used web and software services. The formulas for setting up these actions are called “recipes.” The recipes are all based on the concept of “If this happens, then that should happen.” The this part represents the trigger. The that part represents the action. Pieces of data in the trigger are called ingredients. The services connected by the recipes are called “channels.” IFTTT offers over sixty channels you may use in your recipes: Twitter, Facebook, Evernote, Dropbox, Google Docs, text messaging, email, weather apps, and many more.

The purpose of IFTTT is to automate certain tasks, in order to save you the trouble of having to do it yourself regularly and manually. Recipes may be turned on or off.

Here are some examples of recipes you can set up in IFTTT:

• Create a searchable backup of every tweet you make automatically. In this recipe, Twitter connects with a Google spreadsheet.
• Send documents from Dropbox to your Kindle automatically whenever you place any PDF or DOC file in a certain folder.
• Automatically receive your iPhone camera photos to your email account.
• Backup your iPhone contacts to a Google spreadsheet automatically.
• Set your iPhone reminders app to automatically send reminders to Evernote. You can use Siri to set the reminder.
• Send people you meet a “nice to meet you” email automatically whenever you add them to your iPhone contacts
• When a certain person sends an email to your Gmail account, receive a text message automatically.
• If you receive an email from a specific address, blink the household lights to notify you. (This can be done if you use Philips Hue Connected bulbs).
• Add your Foursquare check-in history to your Google Calendar automatically.
• Automatically receive a text message of the day’s weather forecast every morning.
• If the pollen count rises above a certain level, receive a notification so you can take a Benadryl. (The IFTTT weather channel keeps track of the pollen count.)
• Automatically add receipts that come through email to a Google spreadsheet or to Evernote.
• Set your email to automatically send all attachments to Dropbox or Evernote.
• If you change your Facebook profile picture, automatically change your Twitter profile picture too.

This is just a small sample of the recipes that can be set in IFTTT. There are thousands of pre-made recipes on the IFTTT website and you can create your own. You can even create a daisy chain of triggers and actions across several web services. There are almost limitless possibilities for automating tasks through IFTTT.