As far as I’m concerned If this then that is a completely new service that was created just for me. Seriously, the second I think I’ve seen everything, that innovation is going to take a power nap for a few weeks – then BAM! I’m introduced to a service that I can’t live without.

In all honesty, the show absolutely cannot do If this then that justice. It’s a web service you have to see (use) to believe.

Channel Surfing

It all begins with channels.

Channels are the services that IFTTT connects to. Channels are used to fulfill both the this and the that. Here’s a quick example:

If X happens within Channel A, then trigger Y will happen within Channel B.

There are already an amazing number of web API’s included within IFTTT, as well as some standard ones like SMS, weather and email. All the channels work differently, but most can be used as triggers and actions.

Next up are triggers.

Triggers cause a certain task to activate. For instance, here are some triggers for Twitter:

• An @reply directed at you
• A tweet containing a particular #hashtag
• A new tweet by you

Any one of these triggers can cause an action to fire off.

Actions are what happen after a trigger is set off. Actions can range from sending you and email to sending something to your Dropbox account.

Top 3 Tasks

Tasks are easy to set-up. You simply choose a channel and one of its many triggers. Then you decide what action will happen from another channel. Here are some of our favorites:

Automatically reach out to people who say certain things about your company on Twitter

Take any tagged photos of you and save them to Dropbox Send Starred Gmail Messages to Evernote

Action!

"Think of all the things you could do if you were able to define any task as: when something happens (this) then do something else (that)."

According to the creator of If this then that, that’s all this service does. But, when you break things down like this, things are both incredibly simple and mind-blowingly complex at the same time. The principles may be simply, but the possibilities are endless.

So, what’s the first task you’re going to set up?