Web apps are everywhere. Right from utility apps to mindless time consuming addictive games, the range is vast. For a new app to shine amongst the crowd, to stand out therefore, is really tough. Every now and then though there comes one such creation, which blows away the others by the simplicity of the idea and the power of the app. If This Then That (IFTTT) is exactly one of those.

The idea behind IFTTT is given away by its title. It’s that basic. Basically, an event happening on the internet, called the trigger, is the ‘THIS’. Corresponding to the trigger, you can set an action (the ‘THAT’) that needs to occur. Let’s take an example. Say, every time someone tags in me a photo on Facebook, I want the photo to be saved in my Dropbox in a separate folder. Another example would be getting a text message on my mobile 6 hours before any event on my Google calendar. All this can be automated, and very simply at that, using IFTTT. The whole process can be then saved as a ‘recipe’ for future use or sharing. The interface through which you can do all this is intuitive and powerful. For every channel there is a range of triggers and actions available. At the time of writing, there are 49 channels available. IFTTT can also be combined with mobile notification apps like pushover to make you a productivity ninja.

Give IFTTT a spin here.

 

By Karthik Kannan