If this, then that. It’s really that simple,

ifttt : Their tagline is ‘Put the internet to work for you‘. And it’s damn brilliant.

With this free online service, you specify ‘triggers’ which happen on the internet : like you being tagged on Facebook, or you receiving an email, and then what ‘action’ to execute on that trigger : like downloading the tagged photo to your Dropbox account. You can also share such a workflow in the form of a ‘recipe’. It’s completely automatic, reliable and supports a growing number of channels like Twitter, Facebook, Dropbox, Email, Weather, RSS feeds etc.

To use this, quickly sign up at their website, and you arrive at the Dashboard.

I’ll walk you through a simple recipe : Getting a SMS update if the weather’s rainy.

Click on Create a Task, and you see the ‘if this then that’ structure. Click on ‘this’ to specify your trigger.

You’re presented with a huge list of channels. Every channel has its own unique triggers. Click on ‘Weather’ for the purposes of our example.

Activate the channel by setting your location. Most channels require activation like setting the timezone, linking your mail/FB account etc.

You’re then presented with a list of triggers. We’ll select ‘current condition changes to’ -> Rain.

Now that the ‘this’ part is over, let’s tell ifttt what to do when it’s raining. Click on ‘that’

Again, you have a number of actions which can execute if it’s raining. We’ll choose SMS here. Activate the SMS channel by setting your mobile no, after which they’ll text you a 4-digit PIN to verify. Choose the ‘Send me a text message option’ and customize it.

ifttt offers you custom channel-specific add-ins (fancy name for variables) to include in the customized text, like the {{Condition}} and {{TempCelsius}} here. That’s it!! Click on Complete Action, add in a description and you’re good to go!

But that’s not the end, you can easily share your task idea with the community by turning it to a recipe. Just click on the recipe button, add in some info and voila! You’ve done someone some good :)

We share some of our favorite recipes. You can browse through more in the ifttt’s community page.

You can also add in stuff like posting to FB / emailing through SMS if texting to USA is cheap for you. The possibilities are endless :)

You can also check my previous post on portable apps for USB .

Do share your ideas in the comments section.