IFTTT

Automate All the Things: How to Get Started with IFTTT.

You know when you read an article about something and you think, "wow, I never knew I needed this until now"? That's how I'm feeling about a program called IFTTT - If This Then That. 

IFTTT seems a little complicated at first, and I'll admit, I had to read their "Learn More" page before I could actually figure out what this program does, but it's actually pretty cool. The article explains that the program stitches together programs that would normally never interact; for example, Foursquare and Google Calendar.

The program starts with a channel. IFTTT has 71 channels that include social networking sites like Facebook and Flickr, along with email and iOS programs. The next part, "this," describes what's called a trigger. The IFTTT "Learn More" gives the example of being tagged in a photo on Facebook as a trigger. "That" defines the action that then occurs. So, for example, if you check in on Foursquare, then the check in is added to Google Calendar.

It's kind of confusing, and I think it would take some practice to figure it all out, but for productive people, this is a way of making your apps work together. You can make Twitter send anything tagged #FB to Facebook. You can make certain tagged photos in Instagram go to your email. The possibilities are vast.

For the workplace, this app would be great for all sorts of things; automatically putting events into the calendar, sending meeting remiders via email, etc. With the amount of apps this program supports, IFTTT is a great way to manage all sorts of things.