#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – use ‘if this then that’ for story alerts
Journalists who are interested in particular topics from other news sites can use a nifty new tool to receive alerts when stories go live.
It’s still in private beta but the people behind ifttt – which stands for “if this then that” – seem quick to hand out invites to those who sign up.
The tool, which was our tool of the week for journalists a couple of weeks ago, allows you to connect 17 channels, including RSS feeds, SMS, Facebook and Dropbox, and set rules, with the potential of 1040 possible task combinations.
For example:
If someone tags me in a Facebook photo, download it into my Dropbox.
Or:
If someone such as myboss@newspaperwebsite.com emails me, send me a text
One of many uses for journalists is the ability to set a keyword in relation to an RSS feed and set up an alert.
For example, I copied the Journalism.co.uk RSS news feed, pasted it into ifttt, added the keyword “tip” and selected an email option so now whenever a tip is posted on Journalism.co.uk I receive an email with a link.
You can browse “recipes” created and shared by other ifttt users.
I have a couple of invites to the platform so can invite the first two people to contact me with an email address at Sarah.Marshall[@]journalism.co.uk
Similar posts:
- ‘If this then that’: ten recipes for journalists
- Tool of the week for journalists – ifttt, a promising app for dealing with data
- Tool of the week for journalists – Facebook Search
- Tool of the week for journalists – Topsy, real-time search for the social web
- #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – 10 Mac apps for journalists
