I don’t think there’s anything duct tape can’t do.
Duct tape has held my kitchen table together. It’s patched together jackets and golf clubs. When I was 16, it once held the engine of my car together. (It wasn’t the safest move, but hey, it worked.)
Duct tape is truly a wonderful thing.
But it has a big flaw: It only works in the physical world.
On the web, we need a different tool for those quick hacks and fixes. That’s why there’s IFTTT.
IFTTT: The thing that patches the internet together
If This Then That (IFTTT) is Internet duct tape. It takes most of the Internet tools you use already and allows you to sync them up.
All you have to do is create a recipe: If (Tool X) does this, then (Tool Y) does that.
I use it almost every day for this newsletter. I use IFTTT to sync Delicious and Dropbox. When I see a tool that might be worthy of the newsletter, I add a pre-determined hashtag to the tool on Delicious, and IFTTT automatically adds it to a text file in Dropbox.
– Or let’s say you want to be able to text IFTTT an idea and have it added to a Google Docs file. With IFTTT, that’s no problem.
– Or maybe you want to be able to automatically add Instagram photos to a photo gallery on your Facebook fan page. Done.
– Or you’re keeping an eye on the market, so every time a stock goes above a certain price, you need IFTTT to send you a Gchat message with an update. Easy.
I’ve even seen IFTTT recipes that will call you at a designated time with an “urgent” message to help you get out of a boring meeting early 🙂
So click here to get yourself an IFTTT account — it’s free!
A Big Thank You From Me
One more thing: This newsletter’s grown incredibly fast. Today, this email is going out to reporters on five continents. That blows my mind.
Seriously, a giant thank you to everybody reading this. It’s been fun growing this community — week by week, tool by tool.
Here’s what I ask of you: If you like the newsletter, please forward it along to a friend or two. My goal for 2013 is to help as many reporters as I can, and you guys can make sure that we get that help to even more awesome reporters.
Also: If you’ve missed an edition of the newsletter, you can always click here and go back through the archives.
Now get out there and tell some great stories today!