IFTTT - additional cool event-driven tool

I have written earlier this week about "world stream computing" as the new web paradigm, where the web becomes event-driven based on streams of events.   We can see some mobile based applications that conform with the paradigm.  I have written before about On{X}which is based on "event-action" recipes.

Another member in this family is IFTTT (acronym for: if this than that).  Like On{X}, IFTTT also uses the term recipes, it has a large set of shared recipes, which have visual icons (e.g. the Twitter Icon, the Facebook icon and more). 

Some recipes examples are:

Turn off light (on the mobile) when sun rises 

When sometimes tags my name on Instagram, send me SMS

If I check-in into an office, create LinkedIn status

As one can see the events can be events related to various social media, or other feeds (such as weather feeds),  and the actions are actually of the same type.

I have gave as an assignment for students in a seminar last semester to experiment with some tools, and experiment on people who are not IT professionals, if they can get it.  One of the student teams chose IFTTT, and succeeded to get two non IT professional people to download it, use it, and create some new  recipes.  It took them some iterations to learn it (it is not that trivial), but after an hour, they could generate recipes without problem, and noted that it is working smoothly.  

I guess that these are relatively simple tools that precede the new "active" web wave...

The Internet of Things in practice

I came across a post in the "smarter planet blog" entitled "The Internet of Things start to bear fruits" by Paul Brody,  it claims that the "Internet of Things" vision is beginning to be in reality, and that the major enabling factor is the availability of low cost scalable connectivity.  The data transfer cost is below $1 for GB.  

It surveys some initiatives like: Raspberry Pi, Sensordone, and the Nokia initiative to become the "where company".

Event processing is one of the ingredients of the Internet of Things, and on this space,  Brody mentions IFTTT (If this than that).  Note that I have written recently about ON{X} which is of similar flavor to IFTTT.