Rhodri Marsden: Hacks induce nerdy excitement when they solve small problems

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The word "hack" has become monstrously overused of late, breaking out of its natural technological habitat and forging itself a new life beyond. It has come to mean any activity that represents an improvement upon the old way of doing things, and "hack" now bestows upon that activity a degree of hipster cool.

The other day I saw something described as a "food hack" that was just a recipe. Gazing into the future, you can imagine rail operators describing essential engineering works as "track hacks", to couch the inevitable journey disruption within a more palatable term. Sadly, I guess that's just the way language develops.

Which isn't to say that hacks aren't welcome, particularly online. Weather forecasts, cloud-based photo-sharing, package delivery trackers and music players all make our lives more pleasant or convenient to some degree – but there are thousands of them out there, they're used in a dizzying range of combinations that are unique to each person, and they rarely work in tandem in the way we want them to.

I mean, I know that I rate highly on the nerd index, but I frequently find myself thinking "Oh, wouldn't it be great if I could do this?" – whether that's having new cricket articles by Stephen Brenkley sent to my Kindle, getting a text message when it's going to rain, or have Instagram photos tagged "dad" to be automatically emailed to my dad. But there are now tools, including IFTTT (If This Then That) and Zapier, that stitch services together and help us to create ingenious shortcuts that streamline not only our digital lives, but our real lives, too. Lifehacks, I suppose.

A precursor would be something like Yahoo Pipes, a powerful but dauntingly complex way of taking RSS feeds from websites, transforming them and spitting them out in a different place in a different format. But a tool such as IFTTT makes it much easier, and the possibilities much broader. You choose the service that the information is coming from, the specific information you're after, and which service you want it sent to, how and when. Which may not sound particularly exciting, but some of the "recipes" that the users have been concocting are exceptionally neat.

For example, getting a text message when something you're looking for pops up on Craigslist. Receiving an automated reminder to contact someone and say "hello" the day after adding them to your address book. Or sending a text that triggers an incoming phone call, helping to get you out of a tedious conversation at a party.

Tie in home-automation products, and the potential for hackery becomes even more apparent. Send a tweet to turn on your heating, or keep your pets cool by having a fan turn on when Met Office data shows high temperatures. A motion sensor on your wrist could boil the kettle when it senses you're up and about, while Google Glass could display instantly visible alerts to everything from a West Bromwich goal to the presence of an intruder in your home.

Do these hacks needlessly increase the information flow? Maybe. Do they end up bringing us any additional long-term happiness? Debatable. But do they induce nerdy excitement when they solve small problems that were barely there in the first place? Definitely.

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