I first read about if this then… on lifehacker today while riding into work on the tram.
If This Then That is a simple to use tool to keep your social networks, to-do lists, RSS feeds, imaging sites, and all your other webapps on the same page.
The core of If This Then That works off of different channels you can use to create your own recipes for sharing by using the basic instruction, “if this, then that.” For instance, you can set it so that if you text message something with a particular hashtag to a specified number, then it will automatically create a note in Evernote. You can also set it to automatically pull your photos off Instagram and save them to Dropbox, send you a text message when you have a Google Calender event, or even send you an email if it’s supposed to rain tomorrow. Provided you’re using one of the 35 different services and webapps currently supported, you can cross-link and integrate them in almost anyway you see fit.
It strikes me as a good stab at what I wrote about in 2006. Pipelines for the web…
That was quite some time ago and I’ve been hoping Conduit would get worked on but things have gone very quiet on that front. Then came along, Ping.FM which was also interesting for slightly different reasons before they got aquired. So I was surprised when I learned about IFTT, so I gave it a try.
So my first pipe or task, useful so I can save links from anywhere just by sending a correctly formatted instant messenger to the right bot.
I made it into a recipe, then decided to checked out the pre-existing recipes other people have made.
Here’s some of the ones I’m finding interesting…
- Google Reader > Evernote
- RSS > Facebook
- How useful would Text > Phone be on a bad date?
- Google Reader > WordPress
- Google Reader liked items > Readitlater
- Google Reader liked items > Instapaper