Forums / Tips & Tricks

sysax

I’ve recently discovered the awesome webservice - www.ifttt.com (stands for “if THIS than THAT”)
IFTTT uses APIs of popular services (such as twitter, FB, google reader, etc.) to make connections between them and automates actions you do with these services.
I figured out 1 recipe which could be useful for RTM lovers and want to share it with you.

I use Google Reader (GR) for reading blogs via RSS and usually do it at office during 10min rest breaks. However sometimes the reading could be so attractive and it is hard to get back to work :) To avoid such situation I use following trick:

First, you should setup IFTTT to work with RTM. Unfortunately, there is no native integration of RTM to IFTTT. However you can use RTM feature of adding tasks via e-mail. To do this, in IFTTT you should add a channel “Email” and insert here your RTM inbox email (find at RTM settings - info). Then check your RTM inbox and find a msg from IFTTT - you should paste the activation code from task’s Notes to IFTTT window.
Then you should link your GR to IFTTT - no problems are supposed to be here :)

Once GR and RTM are linked to IFTTT, let’s make a new IFTT task.
Select GR channel as “THIS” trigger and select “New starred item in your Google Reader”.
Select E-mail channel as “THAT” action and edit the subject and body of mail as you prefer (don’t forget about RTM e-mailing RTM emailing tips - https://www.rememberthemilk.com/services/email/#inbox). I stopped at following:
Subject of mail: {{ItemTitle}} #**LATER #read ^sunday {{ItemUrl}}
Body of mail - empty

In RTM I have list **LATER which acts like a bin for all tasks. I use Smart List “LAT-search” (list:**LATER and status:incomplete and (dueBefore:today or due:today)) which shows all tasks from **LATER list which are overdue or due today.

So, at office i read Google Reader in “expanded” view (only titles are shown) and mark articles which I want to read as “favorite”. Such articles are automatically put as tasks in RTM and will pop out on Sunday when I will have enough free time to read. I also can find such tasks with tag “read” when I want to spend some time on reading blogs not on Sundays.

Hope somebody will find it useful!

It would be interesting to hear your suggestions of use IFTTT with RTM (e.g., I also have similiar actions triggered when I mark an article in Readability as favorite and song as favorite in LastFM).

And maybe this thread will motivate developers of IFTTT and RTM to make the native integration between these 2 awesome services - vote for it here https://www.rememberthemilk.com/forums/ideas/12767/

Posted at 9:16am on March 29, 2012