Introducing The New IFTTT
blog.ifttt.com
blog.ifttt.com
The very clever thing about IFTTT is they sat and cheaply began the process of building the web layer.
I like it!
WeMo is likely the first of many many gadgets and interfaces where they can accept links.
Now they wait and see how quickly the China Ecosystem and the gadget makers like Belkin deliver lots of nice cheap easy trigger devices.
BugLabs...Nest...Dropcam...LG Smart Refrigerators...Toyota Prius...
I don't see any way to add channels - either a hardware one or a software one. You could use RSS but that is it. And I don't see any way to add an action. They could very easily add a "web hook" URL for a custom action.
I get really annoyed when I see sites like this that anoint winners. They already have an API to work with outside sites but they just don't publish it
Also, what's ifttt like to work for so far?
If you open it up so that j. random startup can announce "Hey, we provide trigger foo, trigger bar and action baz" in a way that doesn't require anything more than cursory human interaction on the IFTTT end of the transaction, you suddenly become the default aggregation point for new services...
And may I say that having to worry about spammy APIs is kind of an awesome problem to have.
It is much more important to get the experience right with one or two small specific cases first - and then to make it available to the larger public.
Plus, they essentially are a user by default of a product/service they wanted for themselves in the first place. It's a great way to bring passion to the masses...
This would help:
- Change the tagline from "Put the Internet to work for you" to something more descriptive.
- Have a prominent "About" link on the blog. Write an About page, or better put some content on your home page.
Okay, so I can create "connections" on an "if this then that" basis. I need more examples of the sorts of thises and thats that I can use as input and output, though. Like, apparently I can control my home appliances? And... what else?
No, the page in question does have 1 really good example, the if Instagram then Dropbox example. I think the homepage of IFTT would benefit from a nice animation where the "this" and "then" options cycle through various options. It would show how any tigger can be combined with any action and highlight a few of the good use cases.
BTW, really really cool!
Further down the line when "normal" people will be adopting this (they will) then the recipes will be the primary selling point IMHO.
Just tak a look at a few of those and you should "get" what it's about.
The problem is that the site doesn't even say what the concept is.
I think you either get it or you don't. Apply whatever abstraction of "get" as you want.
There isn't that much to get really. If you are a programmer if this then that should kind of tell it all.
I am not a programmer (but know how to program a little) and I had no problem "getting" it. I don't believe developers dont get this.
Reading the brief description on the About page or playing with the site for 2 minutes would solve this, but neither of those things are discoverable from the blog post.
A blog in this context seems more to be used to tell people about where in the process a given company, service, product is.
If you are reading the blog there is a big chance that you "get" the product already.
Anyway. It's not my business. And I agree they could have an about up. But it seems to be a problem way down on the priority list. That's just my opinion of course.
Someone might buy the company to offer as part of a home automation type product, but that's about it.
I have a highly hacked local user CSS stylesheet to get around the problem of small fonts on too many sites. I rarely have to resize pages, but this one was actually too big.
Something of a novel problem.
And generally my #1 rant about any given tool / webservice / product / etc.
Tell me. In language a five year old would understand. What the fuck your gizmo does for me. What problem does it solve / address?
Prominently on your homepage / project page / blog / manpage / help/about page. Whatever.
That is all.
I think this is an important detail for an app like ifttt as they necessarily have to store the actual passwords in a form that they can reverse encryption (for websites that do not support something like OAuth) for in order to submit on the user's behalf. So it's important to get some transparency on the mechanism by which ifttt does this.
I also posed the question here a while ago: http://www.quora.com/How-does-ifttt-securely-store-passwords...
And you appear to have received an answer there, as well. Anything using OAuth doesn't need to store passwords, and for anything else ifttt stores the password in an encrypted (but obviously retrievable) form. I don't see how they could do otherwise; at most, they could refuse to interoperate with any sites not supporting OAuth, and I don't see the benefit to that.
http://www.belkin.com/wemo/ ($50 switch, $100 for switch + motion sensor)
If I was looking to dip my toe into some home automation toys, I would rather pick up a Nest($250) and one of the iOS/Android powered home locks (~$300) than the equivalent # of WeMos(at $50/per)... but that's just me. To get real value out of a WeMo system, I figure you need at least 10 spread around your house.
If the WeMo's were $20-25/ apiece and they had a wall switch version, I think Belkin & IFTTT would be a game changer in the home automation space.
They could optimize for lower power. 0.3W seems pretty high, I would bet they could reduce that by a factor of 10 if they tried
http://supermechanical.tumblr.com/post/25189115532/its-all-o...
Of course it depends on how often you "call home" to check for any information. What might be acceptable for monitoring temperature would not work for a switch when you expect immediate response.
Check out Lockitron! (https://lockitron.com) - we come with an API, no monthly fee, and a variety of locks that will work on most doors or apartment buzzer systems.
A keypad backup is a very desirable feature to me. Possibly to lots of others too, I would think.
Then its about $45 and open source. Of course it isn't in the fancy package.
Of course if we want to go that route, then an open source board using say an ARM Cortex M4 (like the ST Micro 32F4) would get the parts cost down around $10 - $15. I'm guessing that is how Belkin implements this as $50 is about 3x that cost.
You also need to be very, very careful when working with the mains. I wouldn't route a board that works with it unless you know exactly what you're doing.
It'll probably be easier than making Linux deal with your relayA BCM2835 (Raspberry) uses ~2W, while an ATmega186 (Arduino Duemilanove) uses ~0.027W. So yes, massive overkill.
It's a bit like saying using a tungsten lamp is massive overkill in lighting a room.
Prior to the WeMo your best option for power socket control (as an amateur/DIY/Maker) was something like one of these:
* http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10747
* http://www.pwrusb.com/order/
Or hacking a radio remote-controlled power socket. All of which require additional work.
I'm waiting for a 240 Volt version with NZ connectors.
IF retweeted
Then Turn Strobe Light On
Then Wait 5 seconds
Then Turn Strobe Light Off
Edit: Sorry for the trouble. We're working getting a link to our About page from the blog. If you hit the home page, the giant 'Learn more' link has been really successful at getting people there.
I only discovered WeMo today via a comment on Twitter. Though they were announced back in January as available in "US summer" it seems they've been pretty much under the radar since then until now.
I am wary of building on top of any third party web service, but I free services like this I may play with but never depend on for personal or business use.
Some information on how they intend to stay alive would be fantastic.
I doubt IFTTT is doing such data fusion today (their userbase is probably too small to make it worthwhile), but I wonder if that's the eventual plan. To advertisers, that sort of data could be immensely valuable for ad targetting.
There doesn't seem to be any interface for adding multiple channels of the same type. My use case: a personal gmail account and a google apps email account. In general, it would be good to be able to add multiples of any channel, eg
- multiple time channels for different time zones
- multiple twitter accounts
- multiple sms accounts
The ability to share recipes is great, however it is too hard to browse them. Of the ~35000 shared recipes I suspect many are variations on a theme, and whilst the ability to filter by channel and the ranking by popularity are useful much more could be done. In particular,
- being able to choose existing tags when creating new recipes
- being able to browse existing tags
- suggesting recipes that are similar to the one I am adding, or even creating!
Love to see how this progresses, especially as the API opens up.
Quick triggers, on the other hand, are event-driven.
So, for instance, if you had a task that was "IF I send IFTTT a Google Chat THEN post to Twitter" we'll now post your tweet within a couple of seconds (vs. before it would have been within 15 minutes)
They just changed names from Pachube.
IFTTT is just the acronym.
Does anyone know of a similar product which can be programmed through an API?