Old hat to some, looks like Latin to others. IFTTT. If This, Then That. Such a basic concept but so important!
I remember taking my first logic class and having my mind blown every time my teacher walked us through an especially difficult equation. Maybe I'm not the logic master she hoped I'd grow to be but I sure do appreciate the impact it can have on absolutely everything. Case and point is this wonderful project, IFTTT.
Basically, there's a trigger (if this) and an action (then that). How about a real world example. If I drop a ball from my hand, it will hit the ground and create a sound (and then bounce all over the place and make my dog go nuts). In our online universe of websites, all separate and unique, this can become a similar equation. I can tell my blog to post to google+ in it's settings menu so it knows 'if a post is published, then send a blurb to her google+ page about'. Genius, right?! But what about facebook, linkedin, twitter, tumblr, and the rest of the social network sites out there?
After a short while, I suppose folks started to realize how irritating and time consuming it is to manually post to all these different avenues of social-ness and a revolution happened! Well not really, but some smart people in San Francisco decided to create an easy to use website with equations that anyone could create and use (yes, still talking about IFTTT). They call these equations 'recipes'. Makes it easier to swallow for those of us who loathe math. Anyone can make a recipe from any of the many 'ingredients' or pieces of data (like a post url).
But the fun doesn't stop with social networking! It can use data from emails, calendars, news sites, and just about anything else with text. It's quite inspiring for me. A permanent addition to my web arsenal.
with love- M
I remember taking my first logic class and having my mind blown every time my teacher walked us through an especially difficult equation. Maybe I'm not the logic master she hoped I'd grow to be but I sure do appreciate the impact it can have on absolutely everything. Case and point is this wonderful project, IFTTT.
Basically, there's a trigger (if this) and an action (then that). How about a real world example. If I drop a ball from my hand, it will hit the ground and create a sound (and then bounce all over the place and make my dog go nuts). In our online universe of websites, all separate and unique, this can become a similar equation. I can tell my blog to post to google+ in it's settings menu so it knows 'if a post is published, then send a blurb to her google+ page about'. Genius, right?! But what about facebook, linkedin, twitter, tumblr, and the rest of the social network sites out there?
After a short while, I suppose folks started to realize how irritating and time consuming it is to manually post to all these different avenues of social-ness and a revolution happened! Well not really, but some smart people in San Francisco decided to create an easy to use website with equations that anyone could create and use (yes, still talking about IFTTT). They call these equations 'recipes'. Makes it easier to swallow for those of us who loathe math. Anyone can make a recipe from any of the many 'ingredients' or pieces of data (like a post url).
But the fun doesn't stop with social networking! It can use data from emails, calendars, news sites, and just about anything else with text. It's quite inspiring for me. A permanent addition to my web arsenal.
with love- M
No comments:
Post a Comment