If This Then That – Automating Your Web

I’ve been playing around with a fascinating website called If This Then That http://ifttt.com.  Think of it as virtual gaffer tape that automatically ties all of your online activities together in a myriad of possible ways.

When you sign up you then need to connect it to as many of your online presences as you choose, there’s an impressive selection of so-called ‘channels’:

Once you’ve done that you enter the beautifully designed ‘creation’ tool and design you ‘task’, where in essence you choose ‘if this then that’. Choosing ‘if this’ happens in one of your ‘channels’ ‘then that’ automatically happens in another channel.

Rather than twitter on here are some tasks I’ve been experimenting with:

Those are some obvious uses but you can be much more creative with some of the other channels on offer.  The GMail channel allows emails to be sent from your account based upon one of the triggers, although my test of this using the Weather channel to email Mrs Stucke every time it rains in Manchester hasn’t amused her on this wet May weekend!!

You are currently allowed 10 tasks in total – the service is in limited free beta at the moment so I wouldn’t be surprised to see options to expand this for a fee in future.

Overall this is a stunningly designed tool that has massive potential and could prove incredibly useful if you manage many different online tools (and I know most people reading this do!).

I have 5 invites available, if you would like one please leave a message in the comments. And then share your creative uses of ifttt.