Channels, triggers, actions, ingredients, recipes… these are some of the terms used by IFTTT, and although it may seem complicated at first glance, it’s actually extremely easy to use.

Here’s a practical example in case the whole concept doesn’t ring a bell yet… Say I want to keep up with how a certain country is doing in the London 2012 Olympics. First, I enable the ESPN channel and immediately I’ll be asked to set a trigger from a number of predetermined options. In this case I’ll choose “new Olympic medal by country”. Next, I’ll specify which country to follow and create the trigger. That’s the ‘If This’ part.

You’ll need to choose a channel for the second portion of your recipe. Since I want to be notified by SMS I’ll choose that channel – though you can do a number of other things like automatically posting it on social networks or your personal calendar. After activating the SMS channel I’ll choose the ‘Send me an SMS’ action and configure the message to my liking. That’s the ‘Then That’ part.

The resulting recipe is shown with a self-explanatory graphic along with options to share it publicly.

The process is very easy to follow on IFTTT’s site. There are currently fifty different channels, including social networks, essentials like email and RSS feeds, and even Belkin’s WeMo devices to bring IFTTT tasks to the physical world. IFTTT’s tagline is “Put the internet to work for you” and that’s exactly what it does. Of course, you don’t have to create all tasks from the ground up, as there are already countless of useful recipes being shared. I’ve hand-picked a few of my favorites and created a handful others to get you started.

Freebies and Deals

Backing up and Social Networks

Others

Other popular services that are available as channels that we didn’t mention here include Blogger, Gmail, Flickr, LastFM, YouTube, Wordpress, among others. Considering you also get to play with RSS feeds, you can potentially create automated tasks for any given website. As before, if you want to create your own recipe you can later share that with other users on the site or borrow existing ones.