ifttt – putting the internet to work for me

I have created a couple of robots that are putting the internet to work for me.

It was my first play with the ifttt (If This Then That) application since receiving my beta invitation a few days ago.

And it was the digital equivalent of sticking a few Lego bricks together. Wonderful user experience. Ridiculously easy.

ifttt works by allowing you to link “triggers” (if this) to “actions” (then that) to create “tasks”.

And these triggers and actions can be applied to a whole range of useful channels and applications – the likes of Facebook, Twitter, delicious, flickr, Google Reader, RSS feeds, email, Evernote, Vimeo, Posterous, tumblr etc.

The first tasks I’ve created will allow me to regularly and dynamically refresh my Tumblr blog.

I switched my main blogging activity from Tumblr to this WordPress account in the early part of last year, with the result that Tumblr has lain fallow since June.

Not any more.

Thanks to ifttt my Tumblr account will be automatically updated with content every time I either bookmark a link on Delicious, or star (favourite) an item in Google Reader. Here’s what the tasks look like once set up.

Tasks poll the relevant channels for new data every 15 minutes and so the system works in near real time.

And, hey presto, here’s the first automated post as it appeared on Tumblr.

How cool is that?

At the very least cool enough to have one of my colleagues tweeting jealously…

So far so good with ifttt then.

I guess the trick here will be to avoid the temptation to create tasks just because you can. The spam generation potential of this app is quite high I’d suggest.

But, in the right hands ;-), it has the potential to make digital life a whole lot easier and better.