{"id":4909,"date":"2012-09-14T12:29:48","date_gmt":"2012-09-14T19:29:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mlgsca.mlanet.org\/newsletter\/?p=4909"},"modified":"2012-09-11T12:33:15","modified_gmt":"2012-09-11T19:33:15","slug":"best-bytes-automate-your-online-life-and-maybe-your-research-with-ifttt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mlgsca.mlanet.org\/newsletter\/?p=4909","title":{"rendered":"Best Bytes: Automate your online life (and maybe your research) with IFTTT"},"content":{"rendered":"

Contributed by Janet A. Crum, Director, Library Services, City of Hope<\/em><\/p>\n

Have you ever wished that you could make one online system talk to another?\u00a0 Wouldn\u2019t it be great if the pictures you posted to Facebook automatically appeared in Flickr?\u00a0 If someone\u2019s tweets could be saved automatically in a Google document?\u00a0 Or wouldn\u2019t it be great if you could have a personal assistant text you the weather, tell you when someone posts something in the free section on Craigslist, or call you to remind you to take out the trash?\u00a0 Or give you a massage every afternoon?\u00a0 OK, forget that last one, but IFTTT can do the rest\u2014and a whole lot more.<\/p>\n

IFTTT, pronounced like \u201cLift\u201d without the \u201cL,\u201d is an acronym for, \u201cIf this, then that.\u201d\u00a0 It allows you to connect different online services (called \u201cchannels\u201d in IFTTT lingo) using \u201crecipes,\u201d a set of instructions that boil down to If this (something happens in one channel), then that (do something in another channel).<\/p>\n

With 51 channels and thousands of recipes, the possibilities are nearly endless.\u00a0 Here are a few examples of things you can have IFTTT do:<\/p>\n