Meet The Internet’s Best Productivity Tool: If This Then That - WSJ

Check the full article for several example IFTTT recipe scenarios; also see Zapier and Microsoft Flow for similar tools/services

"Apps make life easier. But their popularity means walled-off internet experiences, rather than what we grew accustomed to with the open web. IFTTT, which stands for If This Then That, is a free service that makes apps and devices do things together. Think of IFTTT as duct tape, sticking together more than 300 services that don’t ordinarily get along: Apple Photos and Dropbox, Gmail and Evernote, Nest thermostats and Philips Hue bulbs, just to name a few.

The world is full of productivity tools, but the genius of IFTTT is its simplicity. It connects just two specific services at a time. You only need to imagine what’s possible when one thing can interact with another thing. These are called recipes, and they’re easy to make in a few taps on the IFTTT website or app."

Meet The Internet’s Best Productivity Tool: If This Then That - WSJ