This article was taken from the May 2013 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online.
Wasting time manually updating web apps? If This, Then That (IFTTT) lets users automate tasks. Tell the site what you want done and what action will trigger that task, and it takes care of the rest.
If This...
Log on to ifttt.com and create an account. Then go to the Create a Task page. Choose "a trigger channel" from the selection of web services. Each of these will have a set of triggers for you to choose (for example on Facebook, "You are tagged in a photo").
Choose Create Trigger.
...Then That
Choose an action channel from a similar list. To add a tagged photo to Dropbox, say, select Add File From URL. IFTTT identifies a picture's URL for you. Activate your task. You can create as many of your own tasks as you like, or you can browse "recipes" created by other users, which saves time.
Tweet it
Instagram doesn't officially support Twitter Cards any more, but IFTTT lets you bypass that: activate your Instagram and Twitter channels, then add the recipe at ifttt.com/recipes/68915.
Tag your Instagram photo with a hashtag of your choice, and it will post to Twitter as a native image.
Torrent it
Download a torrent remotely by activating the Dropbox channel, and use the recipe at ifttt.com/recipes/100.
Then send an email to IFTTT with the .torrent file URL in the body.
IFTTT then tells Dropbox to download the file in a specified folder, which your torrent client is watching.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
