If your not using If This Then That, you should
If your not using If This Then That, you should
If This Then That is a set of webapi's that allows you to interlink accounts with actions. http://ifttt.com
Why I Use IFTTT
I use ifttt in order to broadcast my message from G+ to my other social accounts. Recently I have decided that G+ will be my platform of choice for originating my content but I have felt like I just abandoned my friends and family on facebook, twitter, my blog, and IN. I didn't want to do that so I have been posting things in several areas which ment I didn't get it right all the time and left several big gaping holes in content that I sent out to my friends. This is where ifttt came to the rescue.
How I Use IFTTT
The first step is to get an RSS feed of your Google + account. I use http://gplus-to-rss.appspot.com/ all you have to do is enter your G+ user id into a field and it pulls back an RSS feed of your latest post.
don't know how to get your G+ ID? http://ansonalex.com/google-plus/how-do-i-find-my-google-plus-user-id-google/
Next you can either use predefined recipes or create your own custom task.
I chose to create my own as I wanted full control of the message being delivered.
The four action I have are:
G+ to Twitter: This action takes an abbreviated portion of any post in my feed and shares it plus a link to the full post on twitter.
G+ to FaceBook: This action takes the URL of the latest post and simply adds the message "My Latest G+ Post" on it. This behaves just like sharing a link on FaceBook, it will fill in the short description and url.
G+ to Linked In: this works the same as the FaceBook feed but with Linked In
G+ to my Blog: This is probably the most tricky one. I use wordpress as the backend to http://dlbates.com/blog/ so I wanted any google plus content that I tag with iftttb to post to my blog. For this I told IFTTT to search through my RSS information and if it contains the tag then post the content to my blog with a custom title and tag.
One more thing to mention is that if you do this like I have done you may want to disconnect the interlinking you may have setup through twitter and linked in or you will have duplicate post.
Enjoy
David
ifttt / Put the internet to work for you.
Put the internet to work for you.
You could have seen it first on Google +
The Best Mountain Dew Advertisement Ever in my opinion
The Best Mountain Dew Advertisement Ever in my opinion
yesterday was so nice outside we decided to let the kids burn off some steam. Daniel's friend Ayana (Yawny) decided to join in on the fun as well. I decided to snap a few photos while I was out there. It was good for me to get some fresh air as well since I have been cooped up in the house since last Friday.
Hope you enjoy your weekend!
David



The Future of Panhandling
Another one of my coworker’s whiteboards digitized. This one focuses on how QR codes are popping up everywhere. First it was restaurants and now they can be found in everything from grocery stores to hardware warehouses. Soon people will be placing QR codes on the backs of their cars instead of using long web addresses and maybe even panhandlers will now have Paypal accounts in order to collect their donations.
Smart phones and mobile computing sure have made our lives more connected.
Pumpkin carving and general fun
This weekend was a ton of fun. Saturday we invited my mom and sister over for some pumpkin carving, we do this every year and we normally do a lunch, dinner, or lupper along with cake and other festive treats followed by the pumpkin carving, and general goofiness.
This has become a great tradition now that we all have kids. Even our neighbor joined in on the fun. I truly enjoy just getting some time to hang out with them and teach the young ones how to carve up a pumpkin.
Sunday we decided to skip church since my mom was willing to watch the kids and allow me and the wife to have a date afternoon. It was a great time. Me and Jess never get to spend time away from the kids and although we love them to peices, having a moment to sit and enjoy a meal with your partner in life is a precious thing. However, you’ll probably laugh, we took our date at Chili’s and then went to Sam’s club to do the weeks grocery shopping
Enjoy the photos.
Just Shutup and go to CarMax
Today me and the wife finally put an end to the constant problems we were having with our 08 town and country.
Back in May we bought an 08 Town and Country with very low miles and it was all decked out, power everything, navigation, leather… you get the idea. We lovd it and it was in our price range.
About a week after we brought it home we had non-stop problems with it. Check engine lights, tire pressure monitoring problems, doors jamming, seats jamming, and finally the sunroof started leaking. Since we had bought the car from Carmax I started to communicate to them through the store and twitter. They were so helpfull and after replacing the computer they said if you have any more trouble we’ll buy the car back from you and they did just that.
So last sunday me and the wife set out to find a car that will hold 6 ppl comfortably and within the same price range. I was looking to get all of those features back but since the wife is the one who drives it day in and out I decided it was best to just let her pick the car she liked and felt comfortable with. All in all we looked at about 7-10 cars, she liked some I liked others, and we settled on a 2011 Kia Sedona. It had very low miles, was brand new, but had very few features. So we bought it, added a DVD Player to it and now everybody is happy. Take a look at the pictures below.
Thank you CarMax you are truely a great dealership.


























