Thursday, April 26, 2012

Exploring the "if this then that" web app: making the Internet work for you

I discovered a neat little web app called ifttt (if this then that) that makes it easy and fun to run "if/then" statements across the internet by utilizing API's of various web apps such as twitter, google reader, instagram, and many more.  For example, I set up three if/then tasks to see how it works. The first task I set up was IF I upload a picture to Instagram THEN automatically save a copy of it in my Dropbox. The second task I set up was IF I make a blog post here on blogger, THEN automatically send a tweet out to my terenceonline twitter followers.  The third task I set up was IF I star an article in Google Reader THEN send a tweet out to my terenceonline twitter followers linking them to the starred article. There are numerous other if/then statements you can set up and I think people will find ways to get creative with it.  This is similar to what Yahoo Pipes was doing back in the day,but this is bit more simple to use. The only draw back I see right now is that you have to authorize IFTTT to access all of the accounts you set up, which isn't uncommon theses days, but may make some people nervous. If you found this article from my twitter then the IFTTT task worked. What are some neat ways that educators can take advantage of IFTTT? One more thing -- This IFTTT recipe page is pretty cool to get ideas of how people are using it http://ifttt.com/recipes

UPDATE:  The blogger to twitter task has not been working, however the Google Reader to Twitter Task worked fine.

2 comments:

Carolyn Kraut said...

Huge time saver! I have an IFTTT set up to push any LINK I post on Facebook to my twitter account. One more way for me to filter who sees what.Of course, backing anything up into Dropbox or Evernote will help manage online resources or create shared learning spaces.

Terence said...

I love finding ways to save time and be more productive. IFTTT is a nice way to aggregate and organize content in our online spaces. Maybe this could be one of our webinars for our Twenty Minute Technology sessions and of course leave time for questions.