Sunday, September 8, 2013

Automate Your Life

Edited by Peter Muldoon - Original article appeared in Mouthzoff Magazine


Wouldn't it be great if you did not have to deal with the minutia of everyday life and instead could delegate repetitive tasks to technology? Well, you can! While there is not one all encompassing application or website that can take over your whole digital life, I have been using a number of services that may be useful for promoting your music and trying to make a name for yourself.

Here is a quick introduction to the essentials:

www.ifttt.com is a web service that connects other web applications to each other. There are 68 different 'channels' (such as the weather, email, Facebook, Dropbox, YouTube etc.) that may be used in each 'recipe' as 'triggers' and 'actions'.

While everyone is probably familiar with Google's Calendar web application and its capabilities with reminders and scheduling of conflicting events, I find it an effective hub for all of my events and related information.

Google's Gmail is another staple for completing tasks. Two of the most useful features are canned responses and filters. The best uses of these are in combination. For example, any email that contains (or does not contain) certain words can trigger a pre-written email in response.

www.dropbox.com is a synchronising application in the form of a shared folder that you install on your computer. It automatically synchronises any chosen folder or file with the cloud and it very simple to use. The Dropbox folder will appear on your computer and all you need to do it drag and drop files or folders into the Dropbox folder. Another user or computer that has Dropbox has the ability to view or share these files once access has been granted by the folder administrator. Any changes made to these shared files is then applied across everyone's Dropbox.

If you have ever wanted to schedule an email for later or recurring multiple times, www.lettermelater.com is for you. In addition, you can use this service from your email account.

While www.mailchimp.com is commonly used, the advantage of www.campayn.com is that its free plan has autoresponders, allowing you to automatically send an email once a user has been added to your list.




Here is an example of how these services can be utilised together:

As a gigging musician and teacher, I like to promote the gigs I am playing but often forget to post anything on Facebook. Enter www.ifttt.com as the connection between my event in Google Calendar and the Facebook page that I would post my event to. While we are on the subject of Facebook and Dropbox, I have another www.ifttt.com recipe that 'automagically' downloads any photos,that I am tagged in, straight to my Dropbox. When a new student is added to my roster, I add them to a list on my Campayn account. This then triggers an autoresponder that sends them an email with all of the information they will need. Presto!

What about reminding students about their upcoming lesson? While this is a little more complicated in that it uses four services and a bit more technical know-how, the time saved is completely worth it. I use a custom recipe on Yahoo pipes (this requires a little more knowledge of programming, file types and general technology) to filter and reorder the Google Calendar rss feed for only tomorrows lesson entries. www.ifttt.com then reads the vital information, such as the email address to send it to and start and finish times, as well as the payment details and sends the prewritten email with this information inserted more than 24 hours before their lesson.

Setting Profiles for Android (and there are several similar applications for iOS) is a handy application that can control your phone's settings such as wallpaper, wifi/data, bluetooth, sound and more that renders your so-called 'smart phone' actually smart. I use it to read my calendar events and set my phone to silent during travel, gigs and teaching. In addition, if I receive a call that miss during one of these times, the application will sms the caller to let them know that I will call them back as soon as possible.

Scheduling emails is easy with www.lettermelater.com. After you have set up an account, just send your email (with in your usual email program) to me@lettermelater.com with the subject and body of your email as you would normally, but with the addition of "to:", the email address of the person you are sending it to and on the next line "when:" with the day and time. Press send and it will arrive at your intended recipient at the right time. Awesome!

Sign up for these services, explore the premade recipes and if you find one that makes your life easier please share it with me at www..facebook.com/sonicedwardsmusic.


Edited by Peter Muldoon - Original article appeared in Mouthzoff Magazine

For more info on how I work, see my previous article:
http://sonicedwards.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/im-sonic-edwards-and-this-is-how-i-work.html

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