IFTTT is a service for linking various services together. Literally, if
this happens, then
that will happen. If you are reading this article from a link on
Twitter,
G+,
Tumbler,
Pinterest or elsewhere, it is likely that an IFTTT applet put it there. I've been using IFTTT for years and I have several hundred applets automating my digital life.
This post is about some of the most pointless applets, some of which I still use.
 |
| Used in conjunction with with the 'mute your phone at bedtime' applet. I quickly stopped using this one because it would always set the volume to 'very high'. I certainly miss the 'quiet times' feature of my Lumia 950. |
 |
| This one is cool, but pointless. You get to store all of your tweets in a text file for, you know, reasons. |
 |
| Daily pictures from NASA on your homescreen. I stopped using this one because I much prefer a simple solid colour background to my phone whereas the NASA pictures can make your phone look cluttered. Again, I miss my Lumia 950 for its live tiles and transparent icrons. The Microsoft launcher is a good replacement for Android, and you also get the Bing daily pictures on your homescreen if that's a thing you like. |
 |
| Ok, so when an email arrived in my inbox, the LaMetric stopwatch would start time. Presumably I did this so I could time how long it took me to delete, I mean respond to import work messages. I soon found this an annoying distraction and turned it off. I can see how this might be a useful feature someday, again, you know, because of reasons. |
 |
| Pocket is great. Here I can save the links people tweet directly into Pocket. I'm still using this one, the only problem is I don't actually think I every follow up on many of the links. My pocket is hundreds of articles deep and growing. A cull is needed soon. |
 |
| This one is totally not a pointless applet at all. If an email arrives then the attachments are safely stored away. I don't need to trawl through days and days of junk in my inbox, the files are waiting for me on all my devices whenever I need them (along with a large proportion of junk). |
 |
| It sounded good at first. Every new item on your Alexa shopping list automatically gets a new page in OneNote. What's the problem? I delete things from my shopping list when I have bought them, but not from OneNote. My OneNote now has eighteen pages called 'onions'. |
 |
| This one is switched on, but I don't actually use the Alexa 'To-Do'. I use Wunderlist instead. |
So, there's eight pointless applets but there are so many potential good ones waiting to be made. That's all from me, I've got a gutter to clear. If you want to stay and read more vaguely amusing tech stuff, then you might like to
read about some clock programs, or
fun stuff Cortana can do.
