I am Ashley Elsdon

someone who's doing some things

Tag: IFTTT

Incredibly useful automation service

Goodbye IFTTT

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I have been a user of IFTTT since very early on. From when I first became a user of the service it has always been free. However, now they have introduced what they call a ‘pro’ subscription tier. Apparently you can pay what you want for this tier, and for your money you get to keep all your existing automations running. If you don’t you get 3 automations and everything else is disconnected.

It doesn’t seem that you get a lot more from this ‘pro’ tier either. They have said that there are new triggers and other stuff, but I expect that for a lot of users that won’t be very helpful.

In recent times though I had all but stopped using IFTTT. Automation no longer seemed to be of that much use to me somehow. As a result I have stopped using IFTTT. So it’s goodbye IFTTT, it was fun for quite a while.

Well done IFTTT, I didn’t see that coming at all

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Today I got an email from IFTTT with news about their service. This is quite normal. They add to their service on a very regular basis. However, I wasn’t expecting the new addition to be a city. Louisville to be precise.

Whilst this was a bit of a shock, and also somewhat confusing as well initially it now makes perfect sense. IFTTT started off by connecting web apps and social services. Now it’s so much more. It moved on to hardware, IoT and more. Now it’s connecting physical locations and it makes perfect sense.

I hope that this continues. I’d like to see more and more connected cities hooked up to IFTTT, especially London. Well done IFTTT.

Day One (2) Adds IFTTT integration

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They’d said that they were going to do that, but now they actually have. It looks ok. But it’s made me wonder why I would automate a journal entry? What would that work? I’m not sure at all.

Anyway, I’m still on Day One ‘Classic’ and not 2 as yet as I’ve had too many problems with the new version. This might help me try version 2 again. Maybe.

IFTTT retiring their Etsy channel

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I’m a big fan of IFTTT. It’s a great service, and one that seems to be expanding all the time. However, sometimes they do take stuff away as well, and today I got an email stating just that. I understand that services like IFTTT have to change and sometimes those changes don’t make me so happy.

Today they’re taking the Etsy channel away, amongst many others. This is ok I guess, but I did like the Etsy channel and I do like Etsy too. Never mind.

So Zapier releases Multi Step Zaps, or real workflows

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Now this is a pretty impressive thing from Zapier. In the past you could like one trigger or event to one outcome. Now you can use Zapier to build whole workflows with connected apps, and they have a lot of apps that are connected.

This is something I’ve wanted to see with IFTTT for a while but they’ve concentrated they’re resources elsewhere, and, to be fair, they’re much more of a consumer brand rather than Zapier who are very business focused. Of course, Zapier has to be paid for, and IFTTT is free (at least for now anyway), but even so, this is a big step forward for Zapier and I think it’ll make a lot of business processes a lot easier.

A simple IFTTT app arrives for Pebble

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I noticed it on the Pebble Time store the other day and installed it. It seems easier to use than the other one I have, which only seems to work intermittently. Also, this one has three slots to trigger different recipes, all using the IFTTT maker channel, which is expected.

I haven’t had any time to try it out as yet, mainly because I have thought of three things I want to automate via the IFTTT maker channel. Perhaps I will, and then I’ll tell you how it works out.

New IFTTT stuff coming to littleBits!

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So I got an email saying that there will be outage on the littleBits IFTTT channel on Monday, the 21st. This is because there’s some work going on to add new triggers and actions to the littleBits IFTTT channel. Now that’s something to look forward to next week!

I wonder what they’ll add?

So when will there be a Pebble IFTTT channel?

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Now that would be super useful. I’m sure that it was promised a long time ago, possibly when the first Pebble watch came out, but it never really happened. Well, it didn’t happen at all.

The nearest thing to it is an app called This Button for Pebble, which allows an HTTP push from your Pebble. That’s really useful, but I’ve only been able to get it to work intermittently so far. Perhaps I need to persevere with it.

Of course, a real IFTTT channel would be better. Ideally for me it would have:

  • Battery status
  • Accelerometer function
  • Access to buttons
  • Access to the microphone

That lot would do for a start anyway. That would be fun to play with and create recipes with on IFTTT. I’d like to see that.

I wonder if it’ll come about?

What to do with a wemo switch?

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I’ve had this WEMO switch for ages now, and I got it working doing things like switching on a light depending on twitter hashtags using IFTTT. That’s all fine, and quite good fun, but essentially not too useful. So I’ve been thinking about what I could use it for that would be a really good and useful application of the device.

So far, nothing. No ideas at all. Which is a shame as I think it’s a good idea and should have a use. I just haven’t found it as yet.

IFTTT becomes IF and launches 3 new apps

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I’m always interested in seeing what IFTTT do. Now they’ve become IF, or at least their main app has become IF and the interface has changed too. If that wasn’t enough though they’ve launched another three apps as well. I’m not entirely sure that I get the idea behind these three new ‘Do’ apps. Perhaps I need to spend a bit more time with them though, to really get what they’re trying to achieve.

What I’d really like to see them do is …

  • Multiple accounts for a channel, so being able to use more than one twitter account
  • Set times for when a channel runs, so control the frequency, like running something twice a day or every 10 minutes
  • Support for chaining

Let’s see if they do anything like that.