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Yo Channel

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13 pointsbrettcvz27 comments

A single tap, zero character communication tool capable of triggering an action on a remote service. Is that just a button?

Yeah. It can be used to call waiters without investing into a raspberry pie / arduino and a bunch of rotary devices for each waiter when they all have phones.

Wouldn't a text message do that too?

Yo is one tap. Texting is many more.

Does anyone know how IFTTT decides which channels to add? I assume some of them are paid?

I'd probably pay a few dollars for a version that was more open and supported e.g. webhooks. But I guess that's Zapier.

Curious what your looking to rig up, any reason Zapier doesn't fit the bill for you?

We're always listening for new Channel ideas over here: http://ift.tt/ChannelSuggestion We're also working on a way for developers to build on IFTTT. Check that out here: http://ift.tt/platform

What sorts of Recipes would you like to set up?

The big one is HipChat, which I've already suggested at least twice :)

Otherwise, it would just be cool to be able to use IFTTT as part of custom little programs. For example, I have a script that notices when a url on our server suddenly gets a spike in traffic. It would be cool to be able to have push to a IFTTT API and have it trigger whatever actions I want. Likewise, it would be cool to have webhooks so that I could have some custom action that's triggered by IFTTT. Maybe this is outside the scope of how you want people using the service.

Have you tried Slack instead of Hipchat? My old gig used HipChat, and my new one uses Slack, and I find the difference between the two to be night and day.

I did try both and picked HipChat (though I now have a few regrets). Slack's lack of native Windows client was a real bummer and, frankly, I found the Slack interface unnecessarily confusing. I think they need a "simple" mode or the ability to turn some features off by default.

That said, Slack's integration with 3rd party services like Github is just straight up better than HipChat. And after using it for a while there are a couple of small (fixable!) things about HipChat that are really irritating.

> I did try both and picked HipChat (though I now have a few regrets). Slack's lack of native Windows client was a real bummer and, frankly, I found the Slack interface unnecessarily confusing. I think they need a "simple" mode or the ability to turn some features off by default.

I think its personal preference, but I can see that.

> That said, Slack's integration with 3rd party services like Github is just straight up better than HipChat. And after using it for a while there are a couple of small (fixable!) things about HipChat that are really irritating.

Agreed!

For sure, this is all just my opinion. Did they ever come out with a real Windows client, thought? That was an annoyance for me, I imagine it would be a dealbreaker for some enterprises.

It should be noted that Yo's 15 minutes of fame are up: it's tanking in ranking in both App Stores.

http://i.imgur.com/IEjkirh.png

I've already heard NPR's MarketPlace refer to Yo even getting 15 minutes of fame as an indication that a "tech bubble" could be looming. What next, some kid makes an app that lets your phone dial somebody with one click? Oh wait, that's called Speed Dial.

New startup idea: "A single-tap, zero character way to control your life"

Edit: The above should be seen as a bit tongue-in-cheek.

This reminds me of the alien language from Stargate. They had plans to make a whole language, but the vocabulary used in the show actually got smaller and smaller until they just had one word, "Kree!" It's a command that means "do what you're supposed to!" The alien overlords would just yell it at whomever was standing around, like punctuation.

Hey now, there were at least two words. Chapa'ai meant "stargate". I guess "tok'ra" and "jaffa" count too, but I can't even think of any others.

Probably the least developed language of all time.

http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Goa%27uld_language

Lampshaded in one of the episodes where O'Neill asks what "kree" actually means, and the reply is that it's something along the lines of "yoo-hoo".

This depends on your definition of "control." (specifically, the fact that you can only have one of these recipes active.)

Really? Why can you only have one active?

Because you have the first step of all of these recipes is to Yo yourself.

So if you have more than one recipe active time all of the events will happen at once. I.e. if you have the first three recipes all active you will simultaneously: call yourself, turn your lights off, and text your friend when you activate them by Yo-ing yourself.

Which is an impractical way of controlling your life.

The only trigger for the action is sending a Yo. I supposed you could have more than one recipe active if you don't mind executing all the recipes at the same time. :P

Yes, exactly! :) Why would I only want to turn my lights off, when I could set the temperature and tweet at the same time!

I don't think Rube-Goldberg-Machine-As-A-Service is a big-enough market.

Bubble!

OK.

But Bloomberg is with me now - http://www.bloomberg.com/video/is-the-yo-app-the-latest-exam...

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