The Sussex Newspaper - Great news for a great county!

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A great new online (and FREE) service has recently appeared that automates numerous menial online tasks.
With just a few clicks you can 'auto-magically' start receiving an email telling you to pack a brolly if rain is forecast. Or, on the silly-end of the scale, receive an automated phone-call on your mobile, to escape from a bad date.

The service is called IFTTT, and is built around the idea of connecting two separate web-services, and automating tasks, ie: "IF THIS happens THEN do THAT". 
You're free to mix and match a connection between many services, such as Facebook, Twitter, any email service, Google Calendar and many other free services, such as

- send an automatic tweet-reply if someone signs up to follow you,

- create your own Twitter archive (Twitter deletes your stuff after a few days) you can use this set up

- send your Tweets to a Facebook Fan Page, or vice-versa, send your Facebook updates to Twitter

- LinkedIn already has a Twitter integration tool, but it doesn't have one for a Facebook Fan page. If your business wants to replicate content on either service customise this recipe.

- send a message to your Linkedin profile every few days, at set times

The developers have christened it with the ever-so-easy-to-remember name of www.IFTTT.com. The result of such automated tasks are called 'recipes'.

For more serious use, there are some really helpful items, particularly all the "read later" recipes. I often see an article that I want to read later, so I use this recipe to store it on another free service, called Instapaper. Then, when I have more time I log into my Instapaper account and catch up with my "must-reads". This is a great way to stay in control of your schedule, rather than allowing yourself to get distracted by a catchy headline.

For US users there's the ability to automatically transcribe a phone conversation. Possibly this may be rolled out to the UK, but if you want this feature now, one way would be to set up your own US number. With calls from 0.4p /minute, it's not bad considering the time you could save. Although I can't vouch for the transcription accuracy, or the need to change your elocution!

Then there are numerous SEO uses of IFTTT,eg: when bookmarking an item it will replicate this to several other social-media sites and bookmarking services. The long-run value of this is questionable fop course, as Google is constantly on the lookout for "footprints", and such automated tasks leave a very clear trail behind.

With a little playing around you should see the possibilities of IFTTT. Some are very much worth the time investment needed  to set up. In addition, when snooping around the pre-set 'recipes' you may be introduced to some other very cool on-line services that you hadn't heard of before.

Of course, as with any new service, you could just waste hours and get nothing productive done.

About the author:
Jen Brannstrom is contributor for The Sussex Newspaper on Technology Trends, Services & products. He is the founder of More Qualified Leads a firm that helps businesses get more sales leads using cutting-edge Internet marketing techniques.