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There is an abundance of extremely useful services and tools on the Internet: information sites, file storage services, calendars, shared docs, social media, etc. They mostly work in an autonomous way and if you wish to interconnect two services, you need to invest in costly development and use the APIs (Application Program Interface) provided by the vendors.

What can you do then if you want to automatically receive an email or an SMS when the name of your company shows on a specific news site? Or if you prefer adding events to your calendar by sending a short email?

The answer comes from a startup established in 2010 in San Francisco: www.ifttt.com. IFTTT (pronounced as gift without the “g”) stands for If This Then That. This platforms lets you create recipes with the following structure:

 The this part of the recipe is the Trigger. For example a given site that refers to my company or to a specific site. The that part refers to the Action to be performed, for example send an email or an SMS, update a shared doc, etc.

Here’s an example :

Channels are the basic building blocks of ifttt.com. Each channel can be either a trigger or an action. For example Gmail can be a Trigger (if an email is received Then) or an Action (When something happens send an email).

As of August 2014, ifttt.com supports 125 different channels. These include the standard services such as Gmail, Dropbox, Evernote, Youtube, Wordpress, SMS, etc.

Applications on mobile devices

IFTTT provides native apps for iOS and Android that allow you not only to create new recipes but also to use the device both as a Trigger or a Channel. You can for example use as a trigger an arrival at a given place, or the device’s notification service as an Action. Want an example? Send an alert when leaving home to remind yourself to disconnect the WiFi service, so you can prolong your battery power.

The extension of ifttt.com to the Internet of Things is obvious. The service already allows for the integration in its recipes of actions related to the WeMo movement detection service from Belkin or the Hue lighting system from Philips.

Ifttt.com is (for the moment) a free service, but has plenty of potential revenue models: entry fees for manufacturers to be on the platform, premium version that allows the development of complex recipes that include Boolean connectors OR, AND, etc…

One thing is sure – we have here a clever little service with almost limitless possibilities. We urge you to give it a try as soon as possible!