Thursday tech

‘Clearing through the Pocket articles that I’ve been saving: there were a few things that I wanted to touch on.  Otherwise, a busy day with experiments and too may lawyers, hopefully both leading to good ends sometime soon.

The new Nexus  7 is out, with front-facing camera and higher-resolution display.   I’ll probably upgrade later this year, it doesn’t look particularly compelling over what I have for now.

But  a couple of things that I am more actively engaging:

IFTTT:  The more I use this, the better I like it.  “IF This Then That” is an automation generator for web applications.  It connects to the API of dozens of web services, from time and weather to social media, phone, and home services.  Using a very simple interface, you specify create actions depending on triggers. 

So, for example, when I put a recipe into Pocket, it immediately posts to Twitter as Duck a l'Orange Recipe http://bit.ly/12V3UJR French cuisine made its debut in America thanks in part to this famous duck a l'orange.

There are lots of examples to show what’s possible, and promises to extend both the IF and THEN logic. It’s simple and elegant and really useful.  Imagine IF time = dusk, THEN Turn on lights at home, or IF friend posts status THEN send me an SMS.  This is the personalized future of web applications.

ChromeCast:  Another simple ides: stream to your TV from your computer.  It’s a $35 dongle that plugs into the HDTV port,  it allows me to stream applications from my Nexus to a monitor over WiFi.  I can control playback and volume from the  table.

“What’s smart is that it’s stupid,” say the reviews: I’ve ordered one through Amazon US since it’s not available in Europe yet.