ifttt has been up and running, in private beta, for a number of months now. Sorry to hear your company is already blocking us. We hope that ifttt can eventually save you precious web browsing time, not suck it away :)
I have no idea what this is about. Can someone enlighten me?
And before you ask, yes, I know what event driven programming is, and how to tie callbacks to actions. I've written large (>1M process) systems that work by callbacks, events, and message passing.
It seems to me that this is going to be a bit like the Pipes tool from Yahoo, except instead of a data mashup coming out of the combination of multiple services you will instead have some kind of "action" taking place.
From the article: "For instance, you can use Google reader starred items to share images on your Tumblr blog, or customize how and which photos from your Flickr stream show up on your Facebook wall."
So, I guess that ifttt will allow you to define workflows such as:
IF "I star a Google Reader item" THEN "post it to my Tumblr blog"
I can actually see this kind of thing being useful to some people.
Edit: They actually have a WTF page which says what I just said: http://ifttt.com/wtf
Was just about to point you there! Another broad category of use that is emerging is around notifications. ex. IF "I am tagged in a photo on FB" THEN "Call my phone". Its all still in the early going, but we've have seen a lot of interesting uses already. Working on a simple way for others to share the more interesting ones now!
This is an awesome idea, I'm curious to see what they come up with. Tying things together loosely is exactly what I've been wanting to do for a while (looking at you, Google Reader and Twitter).
I started playing with it because I always thought Yahoo Pipes was cool but a bit heavy-handed for light things - and I've found myself going back to add more and more tasks. Plenty of services provide some of the functionality (Twitter alerts, etc), but require a separate signup or new login, while ifttt is flexible enough to take care of tons of different cases.
Some of my recently created tasks and the holes they plug:
* RSS feeds that aren't fine-grained enough for my needs
(if there's a new item in The Atlantic's Entertainment RSS feed that matches "Game of Thrones," then email it to me)
* RSS feeds that I want to be updated about ASAP, but don't want to have to sign up for
(if there's a new item for an eBay search I care about, then send me a message via GTalk)
* Lightweight Twitter alerts
(if there's a new tweet that mentions X, then send me a message via GTalk)
This seems like a really ingenious way to simplify programming for both programmers and non-programmer-but-still-technically-savvy-people. For instance, this service provides a dead simple way to get an email or text alert for anything you can "trigger" on the available web services.
For programmers, this is also a simple way to hook into external services without having to download/learn their API.
I have been thinking about how to make web services more easily connectable for a while but all of my ideas required some participation from each service. Ifttt still requires a thin wrapper to expose a web service as a channel but after that everything has the same interface.
i wish more sites were triggered/triggerable in this manner. too many sites assume that they are the only part of someone's workflow, when they aren't.
12 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 42.7 ms ] threadAnd before you ask, yes, I know what event driven programming is, and how to tie callbacks to actions. I've written large (>1M process) systems that work by callbacks, events, and message passing.
From the article: "For instance, you can use Google reader starred items to share images on your Tumblr blog, or customize how and which photos from your Flickr stream show up on your Facebook wall."
So, I guess that ifttt will allow you to define workflows such as:
IF "I star a Google Reader item" THEN "post it to my Tumblr blog"
I can actually see this kind of thing being useful to some people.
Edit: They actually have a WTF page which says what I just said: http://ifttt.com/wtf
Some of my recently created tasks and the holes they plug:
* RSS feeds that aren't fine-grained enough for my needs (if there's a new item in The Atlantic's Entertainment RSS feed that matches "Game of Thrones," then email it to me)
* RSS feeds that I want to be updated about ASAP, but don't want to have to sign up for (if there's a new item for an eBay search I care about, then send me a message via GTalk)
* Lightweight Twitter alerts (if there's a new tweet that mentions X, then send me a message via GTalk)
Other cool examples of ifttt flows:
http://craigt.co.uk/blog/?p=146
http://web-mastered.de/post/4748705681/iffft-dropbox-update
http://blog.christineyen.com/2011/05/how-i-use-ifttt/
tl;dr - really lightweight, well-designed version of yahoo pipes that is genuinely fun to use.
For programmers, this is also a simple way to hook into external services without having to download/learn their API.
I have been thinking about how to make web services more easily connectable for a while but all of my ideas required some participation from each service. Ifttt still requires a thin wrapper to expose a web service as a channel but after that everything has the same interface.