IFTTT Comes To iOS

This is huge:

MacStories: IFTTT for iPhone: A Different Kind of iOS Automation: “IFTTT brings a different kind of automation to iOS that doesn’t need URL schemes or bookmarklets, but that instead looks into native pieces of data to connect services together. It’s an innovative approach to monitoring photos, contacts, and reminders that are added or modified on an iPhone, but it should be familiar to users who already rely on IFTTT for their daily web automation tasks.”

After I hooked the service up to various services (WordPress blog, Pinboard, Instagram, et al) last week, I’ve once again fell in love with the idea of automating a few things that I do on the web. It’s a little nerdy and has a learning curve until you get things just the way you want them, but this service is hugely useful for both affiliates and publishers. I like it because it’s an easy way to bring things onto my self-hosted WordPress site (which I’m trying to make my home base for everything) without having much fuss about it because IFTTT works quietly in the background as long as everything is set up right and working.

Now that IFTTT is on iOS as well, there’s so even more potential with iOS7’s new background tracking for apps. The native features that you can use in the iOS app with Photos, Contacts, and Reminders aren’t much to shout about (yet), but the web recipes you can use are immensely powerful. I rely on IFTTT to do a lot of heavy lifting for me in the background and have it plugged in with various channels such as Pinboard, Instagram, foursquare, WordPress, a few RSS feeds, and even SMS. I’m kicking myself for not using the service more earlier because it’s added so many new channels and features in the past year.

Whether you’re an affiliate, a publisher, or just want a web service that does things in the background for you (e.g. back up your Instagram photos to Dropbox, text you the weather every morning, or really just about anything else), go try IFTTT. You’re missing out if you’re not using this service.

Here’s my recipes, btw:

IFTTT / devintonhaeuser’s Shared Recipes

GMail 2.0 and The Decision to Leave iOS?

We’re big fans of Google Apps for Enterprise and use the service for our email, docs, calendaring, telephony (via Google Voice’s integration with Sprint), analytics, feed reading and even backups with Google Drive.

So, we were excited to hear about the new GMail app for our main computing devices these days, the iPhone:

The Gmail app for iPhone and iPad: version 2.0 | Official Gmail Blog: “Six months ago, our team set out to completely rebuild the Gmail app for iPhone and iPad to give you you a faster, sleeker, and easier experience on iOS. The result? Version 2.0. With version 2.0 of the app, you’ll get a totally new look and feel, plus a bunch of improvements like profile pictures in messages, numerous new animations from swivels to transitions and infinite scrolling in the message lists.”

Between the new GMail app and the revised Google search app with its nifty and better-than-Siri response time and quality, we’ve had many internal conversations about whether it’s time to think about Android as a platform.

The iPhone and iPad make for great “Google” computers when paired with the stream of quality apps coming out of Mountain View. Mission critical apps such as Google Analytics are available to us via third party iOS apps like Analytics Pro. Our enduring reliance on RSS for alerts, status messages and a news stream is satiated with Google Reader’s plug into the Reeder app.

However, are we missing anything as a company by not being on the newest flavor of Android? While it’s getting mixed reviews, the Nexus 4 and its installation of 4.2 Jelly Bean looks pretty interesting.

While we go back and forth with this almost-religious decision, we’re constantly developing new apps for both iOS and Android (as well as the open web with HTML 5) and noticing new things popping up in both that point to exciting futures for developers and users on both platforms.

At the moment, in comparison to Android (and I hate to admit it), iOS (especially critical apps like Mail) seems… stale and even clunky.

So… what to do?

Analytics, APIs and Mobiles

We’ve been experimenting with Keen’s API-as-analytics platform (simply drop some code into your existing code) on a few of the apps we’re building for clients and have been mightily impressed so far…

Keen IO – Analytics APIs: “So many of the devices we use everyday are internet connected and could certainly benefit from great user analytics. And we want to be a part of it all. But, in the short-term, we’re spending our time on where we think we can make the biggest impact – mobile. We’ve got SDKs for iOS, Android, JavaScript, and Ruby ready for you today. Python and Windows Mobile are in the queue and coming soon.”

If you’re doing anything with iOS or Android (we haven’t ventured in Windows Mobile development), we can’t recommend poking around Keen enough. It’s not for everyone and doesn’t offer all the options of a custom solution, but definitely does the job if you need to tackle larger windmills in your app development.

Should You Develop iOS or Android Apps?

The short answer is yes, but the long answer is more complicated depending on your audience and where/how you need to be discovered…

iOS Devices Have Been Dominating Mobile Web Traffic For The Past 6 Months [Report] | Cult of Mac: “Android technically sells more smartphones than Apple, but iOS devices continue to dominate mobile web traffic. Chitika Insights has been tracking web traffic on the top mobile platforms, and iOS commands 67% of usage and Android only 33%.”

We generally start clients with iOS and web apps but don’t shy away from Android if the market is there.

Revenge of the Podcast on iOS6?

I, for one, love the sound of this…

Starting In iOS 6, Apple Might Introduce Paid Podcast Subscriptions | Cult of Mac: “With iOS 6 this may all change. The new Podcasts app that Apple has released today contains a strange ‘Redeem’ button, similar to that found in the iTunes and App Stores, present only on devices running iOS 6. Currently, this makes no sense. All iTunes podcasts are free, and don’t require any sort of payment method. The presence of this button in iOS 6 could, however, point to a paid subscription model for podcasts starting with the release of the operating system in fall.”

I’ve downloaded the app on my test iPhone running the iOS6 beta and I’m very happy to say the least. Fantastic app and if these rumors are true, it could mean very big things for the world of performance marketing podcasts.