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Introducing The New IFTTT
- tommyvyo 14y agoLooks very nice! Congrats to the team on all their past and future success, job well done.
- esente 14y agoNot really excited. There are not many new channels, and those are mainly for some additional devices. Some may find them useful though.
- johns 14y agoThe key thing for the new channels is that it's the first expansion outside the screen and into the physical world. A lot more to come in that area, stay tuned.
- bengillies 14y agoI'd be a _lot_ more excited by the update if I could add my own custom channels for less popular sites, or use other custom channels that other people have added.
- johns 14y agoWe're working on a Channels API to open it up to devs.
- masonhensley 14y agoIt is a bummer that the Belkin WeMo's are going to be so expensive. http://www.belkin.com/wemo/ http://www.belkin.com/wemo/ ($50 switch, $100 for switch + motion sensor) http://ifttt.com/wemo_switch http://ifttt.com/wemo_switch 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.
- jlongster 14y agoAlso, I'm concerned about the idea of it taking power even while everything in the house is off. Is there a page somewhere that addresses the power usage concern?
- alanh 14y agoI tested a preview unit. It was something like 0.3 watts, if I recall correctly.
- ldayley 14y agoPerhaps if they added integrated batteries that only initiated a power draw to charge when they reached a specific level they wouldn't need to draw power from the grid constantly. Expensive way to solve the problem though, perhaps.
- nemo1618 14y agoWow, how have I not heard of WeMo before? Though Belkin is typically a little overpriced, I think they've opened the door for other companies (Phillips, maybe?) to offer their own version. I'm definitely looking forward to automating my dorm next year.
- follower 14y agoI wondered the same thing as I've been researching controllable power sockets for a while (although more looking at digital IO/USB control). 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.
- sp332 14y agoI'm not clear on the difference between a trigger and a quick trigger. Is it just that regular triggers are run in batch jobs, and quick triggers are processed individually?
- johns 14y agoRegular triggers are checked every 15 minutes. http://ifttt.com/wtf http://ifttt.com/wtf
- jashmenn 14y agoMost of the triggers on IFTTT require polling to receive updates. We poll the sources roughly every 15 minutes. 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)
- amolsarva 14y agoNote to hardware hackers: IFTTT almost certainly started with some musings about "wouldn't it be cool if I could make my household X trigger web API Y" and for many entrepreneurs would have led to a startup about smart gadgets. There have been many over the years. 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...
- asmithmd1 14y agoIt would be more exciting if they had an API. 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
- johns 14y agoI started last week to work on the API. Stay tuned.
- willwhitney 14y agoExciting stuff! That seems like an interesting way to bring back in the hardware possibilities from the comment above - using an ifttt API in tandem with smart devices could eliminate a ton of work in developing automation. Also, what's ifttt like to work for so far?
- johns 14y agoVery fun and small team of 8 with great vision. Starting the week before this redesign was a little hectic, but it was worth the effort. Only big things to come :)
- ckluis 14y agoHell yeah for marketing this is cool: IF retweeted Then Turn Strobe Light On Then Wait 5 seconds Then Turn Strobe Light Off
- graham_king_3 14y agoPeople who know seem excited about this, so I spent two minutes following links. I still have no idea what ifttt is. 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.
- jedahan 14y agomaybe having the learn more content just be below the tagline instead of having to click a link. friction.
- johns 14y agoI'll work on getting better info on the blog. In the mean time, here's our about page http://ifttt.com/wtf http://ifttt.com/wtf
- planetguy 14y agoEven that needs a lot of work. 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?
- perlgeek 14y agoI've skimmed the first two screen-heights of that page, and I still have no idea what it actually is or does. Maybe link to an explanation somewhere?
- johns 14y agohttp://ifttt.com/wtf http://ifttt.com/wtf 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.
- neutronicus 14y agoMy first thought on seeing the name was that it had something to do with Fourier transforms.
- mikemoka 14y agoI am happy about their foray into the physical world but there is a much more critical feature still missing in my opinion: the possibility to check for a desired trigger (e.g. stocks) at a specific time/date or, in general, the possibility to combine multiple triggers at once
- leejoramo 14y agoI would use IFTT if I could pay them money. 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.
- frio 14y agoI've upvoted you, but I really want to second this verbally too. I don't see any adverts on IFTTT (and even if they were: once setup, I wouldn't be visiting the site often and seeing them), and don't understand how they're monetising. This is a service I'd really like to use, but I don't want to come to depend upon it, then find it folding (either due to monetary problems, or acquired by a third party and being shut down). Some information on how they intend to stay alive would be fantastic.
- joshschreuder 14y agoMaybe through 3rd party API licencing like the Belkin (and forthcoming Pebble watch)?
- jleader 14y agoI wondered about that too, and one thing that occurred to me was that if they get popular, they've got access to combine data about their users across all the source and sink services the users use. That is, they can get all my readily available Facebook data (friends, likes, etc.), my Twitter feed and follower/followee/favorites lists, etc. 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.
- bkirwi 14y agoMy first reaction was that businesses would use this to do systems integration (send an email every commit, add a note in group chat before a meeting, etc.) These are already pretty easy to wire, but there's value in going from easy to trivial...
- cjdavis 14y agoIf you are looking for 'microcontrollers <-> webservices with full restful api' then Cosm looks pretty good. Arduino, Nanode, mbed, devices running OpenWRT... They just changed names from Pachube. https://cosm.com/ https://cosm.com/
- Maro 14y agoThis is the first time I hear about IFTTT. I like it very much. The name is terrible though. The other similar startup on HN, Zapier, has a much better, easier to remember name. I'd go as far as to suggest to change the name. Here's one: apibit.com is still available.
- icebraining 14y ago"If this then that" is a terrible and hard to remember name? IFTTT is just the acronym.
- newman314 14y agoThis is a little off-topic but I would still like someone from ifttt to answer in more detail the method that they use to store passwords for 3rd party sites. 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-for-sites-that-do-not-use-OAuth-or-similar-methods http://www.quora.com/How-does-ifttt-securely-store-passwords...
- JoshTriplett 14y ago> I also posed the question here a while ago: http://www.quora.com/How-does-ifttt-securely-store-passwords-for-sites-that-do-not-use-OAuth-or-similar-methods 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.
- newman314 14y agoTo be clear, I was looking for more detail around how they were doing the reversible encryption.
- neilparikh 14y agoThe Belkin WeMo looks useful, but looking over its site quickly, it doesn't appear to be programmable through an API. Does anyone know of a similar product which can be programmed through an API?
- rubergly 14y agoit sounds like IFTTT is its API.
- alttab 14y agoIf its an introduction, how can I read the entire post without knowing what the hell it is?
- Cogito 14y agoI very much like it, two comments: 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.
- rjwillers 14y agoIs there any updates on the ifttt api? When is the ETA?