I'm a geek.  Perhaps not a mega-geek, but a geek none the less.  I LOVE geeky stuff, from Star Wars, to LoTR, to anything Apple/Mac related.  LOVE IT!  One of the COOLEST geeky things I've found recently is IFTTT.com.

ifttt logo

I.f T.his T.hen T.hat .com is an incredible web-service that connects all of your most used web services, like Facebook, Dropbox, Evernote, Twitter, Instagram, and MORE!  The idea behind it is automating a string of tasks to make your life simpler.  Here are just a few examples of what you can do with IFTTT.com:

* Have your phone text you the weather every day.

* Have your phone CALL YOU, when you send a particular text message - sneaky way to get out of a meeting

* Have any pictures you take on Instagram automatically backed up to your Dropbox account

* Have your Facebook status PUSHED to Twitter (instead of the other way around)

* Plus so so so much more!

How can IFTTT.com help in terms of ministry? My inspiration came from reading an article about a youth ministry group that had created an Instagram account to share youth group photos with students and parents.  I thought to myself, "Hmmmm, how could I make this more interactive?"

Here's what I did:

I created an IFTTT.com recipe (http://ifttt.com/recipes/39145) that looks for ANY public Instagram photo with a designated hashtag (for me, I chose "#stmyouth" for St. Thomas More Youth Ministry)  Once ifttt.com finds this hash tag, it DOWNLOADS the photo to my dropbox account!

Couple that with this recipe (http://ifttt.com/recipes/39147) which takes any pictures YOU take and archives it to Dropbox and you have a great opportunity to collect photos from any given trip because they'll all be in your Dropbox waiting for you when you get back from the trip.

For some added interactivity use this recipe (http://ifttt.com/recipes/39146) and ifttt.com will automatically post your instagram pictures to your group's Facebook Fan Page.

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Copyright 2012 Tom Lelyo