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joeross.me

Civil litigation lawyer. Interested in the collision of law & tech policy. Prone to geekery.

IFTTT

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    How to add tasks to Any.do or Wunderlist via SMS

    This post is exactly what it says on the tin: I’ll share two recipes from if this then that (IFTTT), the service that connects otherwise unconnected pieces of the internet together in epic productivity bliss.

    Did I oversell that? IFTTT is truly amazing. One of its most useful functionalities is the ability to send an SMS to the service that triggers IFTTT to do something else. So, you can create a “recipe” that will forward all text messages in which you include a “#t” to another internet service, like an email address. Email addresses are particularly handy because many other services use them, everything from Evernote to Tumblr assigns users an email address so you can send stuff into your account right from your email provider of choice.

    That way, an IFTTT recipe can receive a text message and, as long as “#t” appears somewhere in the message (without the quotes), it will send an email to anyone I ask. Some services that let you add content via email assign unique email addresses that can receive email from anyone. They’re secure from spam because the email address is nonsense. Evernote does this.

    Others, however, use a universal email address and whitelist each user’s own email as the only one allowed to send stuff to that account. Task management services Any.do and Wunderlist both use this method, allowing registered users to send email to do@any.do and me@wunderlist.com, respectively. If the address you use to send the message is registered, the message subject is added to your account as a task, and the body is included as a note.

    Any.do is dedicated to creating the best task management experience on a mobile device, and they’re doing a great job. Wunderlist, while they have great mobile apps, is more focused on combining them with solid native desktop apps on all platforms. While I watch them add and refine features, I’m using them both.

    I know, I need to get a life.

    Anyway, this IFTTT recipe adds a task to Any.do via SMS. And this IFTTT recipe adds a task to Wunderlist via SMS. You should be able to edit the tag if you want, but I find “#t” is conveniently short, and the recipe will remove it from the final task anyway.

    I have a couple more IFTTT recipes to share, so if you’re interested in this stuff, stay tuned.