Your own little cloud robot
Two startups that have got a fair amount of attention lately are ifttt & Wappwolf. Essentially, both glue together various cloud services and do things that you would normally do, automatically! They’re designed to work in the background so that you don’t have to think about them.
While the two services do similar things, they “glue” together different websites and my gut is that the two, for now, they can be used simultaneously to make your life easier.
ifttt has been around for about a year. It has a beautifully crafted interface that frames everything in the form of “If… This… Then… That…” . To give you an idea of the kinds of things I’ve setup:
- If I mark an article in Google Reader, send it off to Instapaper
- If I send a text message to ifttt, then add it to Evernote
- If someone sends me a #FF on Twitter, thank them
- If I’m tagged in a photo on Facebook, download it to Picassa
- If I check in to somewhere, add it to my Google Calendar so I can track where I’ve been
- Send me an email when it’s going to rain the next day
What really makes this site tick is how simple it is to create new actions. In addition, there’s a shared community of “recipes” that other people have created as templates. ifttt actions run every 15 minutes, which is generally a long enough lead for its actions.
Wappwolf was founded just a few months before ifttt. Wappwolf functions in the same way, but has a focus on automating folders. Product wise, it has a slightly more complicated interface. Like ifttt’s recipes, Wappwolf has actions that other people have created. The integrations that Wappwolf uses are somewhat different from ifttt. Rather than focusing on glueing together different social and personal cloud services, Wappwolf appears to focus on productivity services.
For example, some of the more popular services include automatic PDF conversion from a Dropbox folder or automatic image downscaling. One great feature of Wappwolf’s services include exporting files into an FTP site, something that ifttt appears to lack at the moment.
I found the Wappwolf interface slightly more confusing, but I had some trouble using it. For example, Saved actions didn’t show up anywhere that I could see. In addition, both Safari and Chrome were hanging when I tried to create actions.
I’m looking forward to playing with Wappwolf some more and seeing how it develops. ifttt is truly a great little robot for the cloud, and I hope you check it out.
Thanks for the great article. Note that Wappwolf have launched Dropbox Automator (www.dropboxautomator.com), and received a lot of media attention. The service builds on Wappwolf, but has a much leaner user interface. Check it out.
I tried to combine Dropboxautomator with our free service for signature capturing on the iPad or Android devices and it worked within 5 minutes
If you want to try it yourself: Here is how to use Dropbox Automator to convert any file to PDF and e-sign it on your iPad or Android device on the go:
(1) Download SIGNificant Signature Capture for iPad (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/significant/id433375543?mt=8&ls=1) or Android (https://market.android.com/details?id=com.xyzmo.signature).
(2) Go to your Dropbox and make a new folder; e.g. “Convert2PDFandSign” (alternatively, you can use an existing folder, of course).
(3) Go to http://dropboxautomator.com/.
(4) Connect the Dropbox Automator to your Dropbox.
(5) Select the folder “Convert2PDFandSign” (or whichever folder you chose in step 2).
(6) Select ‘Convert to PDF’; press ‘Add Action’.
(7) Select ‘email’ as the second step and enter your own email address as the receiver email.
(8) Press ‘Finished’ – you are done!
From now on, an email will be sent to you after you upload any file to the folder “Convert2PDFandSign” (note: please be patient, as this could take a few minutes). Open the email attachment and capture the signature on your iPad or Android device with SIGNificant.
Gerald and Roland– Thanks for the mention of Dropbox Automator! When I first saw it it looked a little half baked, but the newest version is definitely worth checking out.