Get notified when flattred

Last week we added a activities in our API. That means you can get a atom feed containing all your activities that occurs on Flattr. At the time of the writing of this article there is only one activity and that is when you get flattred. We have a few other activities coming soon. To get a mail or get notified on your mobile phone you can use IF This Then That. IFTTT is a service that scans feeds and when something new is acts upon the new feed item. This means that if we would add the Flattr feed to IFTTT and we could trigger actions when someone Flattrs you. Actions can for example be SMS, e-mail or Boxcar.

To add the Flattr activity feed to IFTTT and add a action that will send you a e-mail when you someone flattrs you do the following.

1. Get a account over at ifttt.com
2. When you have signed up create a new task and click “this”
3. In the list of available trigger channels select “Feed” and click “New feed item”
4. As the feed URL add https://api.flattr.com/rest/v2/users/USERNAME/activities.atom?type=incoming ( change USERNAME to your flattr username) and create the trigger.
5. Click “That” and select a “Action channel” for example “Email”. I currently use “Boxcar” so I can get push notifications to my phone.
6. When you have clicked “Email” select the action “Send me an email”
7. The default message will suffice, now click “create action”
8. Add a description and click “create task”

Now you have added your first task to IFTTT that will send you an email every time you receive a flattr. Flattr activities also support ‘outgoing’ activities, i.e. activities you do, example is flattr or add a new thing. If you would like to use the outgoing activities you change the type parameter to outgoing instead, https://api.flattr.com/rest/v2/users/USERNAME/activities.atom?type=outgoing. The activities is only available if you have public flattrs. You can change that in your Privacy settings.

Another wonderful solution is to send get notified on your mobile phone when you get flattred. I use Boxcar to enable this. Boxcar makes it easy to send push notifications iPhone. Boxcar has a set of actions available over at IFTTT, so instead of setting up the e-mail action choose Boxcar. You can setup a Boxcar account over at their homepage where you also will find links to download Boxcar for you iPhone and Mac.

If you have any questions you can tweet me or send me a e-mail.