Here’s something new for my Automation obsession:
It’s like speed dial for everyday tasks. Launch Center Pro saves you time by launching complex actions with a single tap. For Recipe ideas see Launch Center’s…
Via Introducing the Launch Center Channel .
Tag: Automation
I like the idea of automating things and getting one thing to control another. I experiment with a lot of stuff like that.
Launch Center Pro 2.3 arrives
Wow, they’ve got a new @IFTTT channel and loads more besides. I think that this is probably a really big step forward for iOS automation, so I’m looking forward into digging into this in a bit more detail and finding out just what it’s capable of.
It’ll also be interesting to see what other people make using it.
Numerous, the dashboard I don’t know what to do with
When I saw that IFTTT had integrated the Numerous app into their ecosystem I was intrigued. I hadn’t heard of the app before, but when I read about it I knew it was something that I’d want to play with. And it was. However, what I hadn’t bargained for was the that I’d very quickly realise that whilst it’s interesting to be able to collate all these numbers into a dashboard, I wasn’t really sure of what numbers I wanted to track. It was in effect a dashboard with no need for any information. Which is a little bit defeating.
So I’m still wondering what to use this for. What I can usefully measure or track that won’t be obvious or boring or pointless. I do hope that something comes to mind in the not too distant future as I think that Numerous and IFTTT are a great combination.
IFTTT comes to Android, and what I’d like to see next
Well it had to happen sooner or later. They’d done the iOS app, the iPad version, Android is the obvious next stop on the route. But I think they did it right. Adding a whole bunch of Android only functionality into the delivery. I thought that was a really nice touch.
Of course, on the day they launched their app didn’t support the 7″ tablet, so it wouldn’t install on my nexus, but it didn’t take long to fix at all which was impressive. I haven’t really had a chance to test out the Android only channels and functionality. Hopefully late this week or early next I might be able to do that, but what I’ve seen so far looks pretty impressive and should allow some interesting cross platform working to occur.
IFTTT have made themselves completely indispensable when it comes to web automation, I do wonder where they’ll go next though. They’ve added so many apps that their service is really comprehensive now, but what I’d really like to see is some improvement in some of the core services, like the simple ability to add multiple accounts for a service under a single IFTTT account.
All I’d like to be able to do is to add more than one twitter account in IFTTT. That would make it so much more useful. I expect that they will do this at some point, perhaps with some kind of ‘pro’ account feature.
I’d pay for that.
IFTTT comes to Android, but not your Android (well not mine really)
I got really excited today when I heard that IFTTT was finally coming to Android. It was always something I knew that they’d do, just a question of when, and the when was now. So when I opened up my Nexus 7 to find the IFTTT app on google play, and it wasn’t there I was a little disappointed. Of course, it was there, but just not for me, or rather, not for the Nexus 7.
I suppose it will come to Android tablets eventually, but it’ll take a little while I guess, which is a shame as the Nexus 7 was Google’s flagship 7″ tablet. I suppose I just don’t get why apps like this can’t come to the OS fully universal from day one? It doesn’t make sense to me.
So I’m back to waiting again for this, and what’s worse, I know about the Android specific channels that IFTTT have built into their Android app. So I really do know what I’m missing!
Audiobus Preset store
I thought I’d like to capture some Audiobus presets for myself and store them somewhere. So I found a way to capture the presets to a Google spreadsheet and then embed the sheet in a web page. The page you can find here. I’ll be adding to it over time, so it’ll grow and more and more Audiobus presets will get added. Obviously, to get them to work you’ll need to access them from your iOS device and not a desktop.
Updates coming to Pythonista and Editorial
This is of course amazing news. These two apps are incredible powerhouses of iOS automation and the new UI module and its associated features will take both apps into new directions for automating text using iOS devices. The developer’s extensive description of how it all works and what’s behind the release is brilliant too.
I can’t wait to get my hands on the new versions. I just hope it won’t be long.
Where I am with iOS automation now
I’ve been talking about this a lot over the last few months and probably one of the biggest issues I’ve had with automating things is actually finding things that I need to automate.
That might sound a little strange but in many ways it has been a solution in search of a problem for me rather than the other way around. Of course when you start to find things that need automating the solutions become more obvious and you start to wonder why you could see them before. Or at least that’s how it feels to me.
Anyway I thought I’d write about a few of the things I’m starting to find that warrant some form of automation. They’ll sound obvious no doubt, but it’s taken me a while to get around to sorting them out.
The first thing I’ve started doing is using drafts a lot. That sounds obvious. I said that it would. I’m writing this using drafts. It’s such a simple app for just getting ideas down and writing wherever I am. I probably should have started using it before. So for notes and that sort of thing I’m using it more and more. It’s great. So far so good. But what of the automation stuff. Yep, that’s a good question. We’ll with some very simple actions I can send articles posts etc wherever I want. No problem. One app, multiple destinations and no issues. I can write things for here or for palm sounds or wherever, easy!
So that’s my start for automation. I’m sure I’ll do more over time, and when I do I’ll explain. I also hope to be able to share some useful stuff too. At some point.
What I think that iOS automation needs right now
I was thinking about this today whilst reviewing some links on general automation stuff. One of the best tools for automating stuff on iOS is Editorial. I love its workflow generator. It’s great but it doesn’t go far enough. What’s needed is a simple editor for creating iOS workflows that span multiple apps and even incorporate web services like ifttt. Perhaps that’s too far. For a start anyway.
But something that could just help you use the available building blocks and get things moving would be amazing. Rather than having to use loads of URL encoding and stuff like that. It’s a thought. I would certainly buy it anyway.
A big bunch of Launch Center Pro sample actions
I found these the other day when I was checking LCP’s twitter feed for useful things, and it is very handy indeed. Not just for the actual actions themselves, but for use as a starter to understand how to create your own from them. It’s always easier to do that with something to work from.
So if you want to use these you’ll need to from within mobile safari on your iOS device.
I am Ashley Elsdon 