IFTTT

One Web app that is quickly becoming one of my favorites is IFTTT (acronym for "If This Then That"). If you're not familiar with the site, you use it to create "recipes" (i.e., macros) that can do some pretty awesome stuff. Probably the most powerful thing about it is that you can use it to get different cloud-based apps ("channels") to integrate with each other for your benefit. Let me give you a sample workflow to help you see what I mean.

If you're a regular reader of my rather irregular posts on this site, you know that I'm an Evernote junkie. So, I like to listen to the Evernote podcast that they post on SoundCloud. One day I thought, "Wouldn't it be cool if whenever they posted a new podcast to SoundCloud that somehow an Evernote note would automatically be created in my Evernote Stuff notebook?" With IFTTT, it's possible.

On IFTTT's site, I clicked "Create" at the top of the page which took me into a simple-to-use step-by-step process. First, I clicked the the big "this" link to set up the event that will trigger the cloud-based macro to run (in this case, when Evernote posts a podcast to SoundCloud). Clicking "this" brings up the list of channels that provide trigger events. SoundCloud is one of these channels (note: I had to authorize my use of SoundCloud for this macro by logging in with my SC credentials). So, I clicked the SoundCloud icon, which "slid" me to the page on which I chose the triggering event. I chose "New public track by anyone you follow" because I follow Evernote on SoundCloud. Note that if I follow anyone else on SoundCloud, their public posts would fire this event, too. However, at this point, I only follow Evernote. Anyway, I then clicked the "Create Trigger" button.

Up slides the next step, viz., setting up what happens when the "this" event fires. Clicking the big "that" link takes me to the channels page again, where I choose the action channel. I clicked the Evernote icon. The action I selected on the next page was to create a note. This brought up a form with which I could set the note title, body message, notebook, and tags. Much of this information was already filled in. I cleared the default notebook title and put it "Evernote Stuff" so the SoundCloud link and description would go there. I also added a couple of tags I like to use for Evernote related content. I then click the big "create action" button and the macro was finished, waiting for Evernote's next SoundCloud post to trigger it.

I highly recommend that you take a look at this service to see what channels they offer and what actions each has to offer. It's pretty cool! If you create any recipes you think are awesome, you can share them with others pretty easily, too! You might even embed the recipe in a blog post. ;)