If This Then That- Simplifying the Web? • Hacker News Board

Re: If This Then That- Simplifying the Web?

#11

Post by linden » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 12:26 AM UTC

arctangent wrote: post #10

linden wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was just about to point you there! Another broad category of use that is emerging is around notifications. ex. IF "I am tagged in a photo on FB" THEN "Call my phone". Its all still in the early going, but we've have seen a lot of interesting uses already. Working on a simple way for others to share the more interesting ones now!

Will there be a way for developers to write their own triggers and actions?

Yes, we are really looking forwarding to being able to open it up as a platform. Working as fast as we can :)

Re: If This Then That- Simplifying the Web?

#12

Post by scottmp10 » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 2:45 AM UTC

This seems like a really ingenious way to simplify programming for both programmers and non-programmer-but-still-technically-savvy-people. For instance, this service provides a dead simple way to get an email or text alert for anything you can "trigger" on the available web services.

For programmers, this is also a simple way to hook into external services without having to download/learn their API.

I have been thinking about how to make web services more easily connectable for a while but all of my ideas required some participation from each service. Ifttt still requires a thin wrapper to expose a web service as a channel but after that everything has the same interface.

Re: If This Then That- Simplifying the Web?

#13

Post by joshu » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 4:33 AM UTC

i wish more sites were triggered/triggerable in this manner. too many sites assume that they are the only part of someone's workflow, when they aren't.