China Business Watch on iPhone

The iPhone is an integrated cellular telephone and media player developed and marketed by Apple. The device combines the main functions of several popular electronic gadgets in a single device, with a shared interface and integration between them. iPhone allows you to make a call by simply pointing your finger at a name or number in your address book,
In addition to its primary function as a cellular telephone, the iPhone includes a music and video player, digital camera, PDA, and an Internet communications suite.
China Business Watch is already on the iPhone, here is an iPhone preview.

If you want to make your blog mobile or put your blog on iPhone, see: Make Your Site Mobile with FeedM8 and Mofuse

How Many RSS Feeds do You Track Each Day?

The popularity of RSS is quite obvious: there are few websites or blogs that don’t provide RSS.
Bloggs can submit their blogs to RSS directories for more exposure, and by trial and error, put their RSS in the best position of their pages.
And on the part of RSS consumers, great tools are available. For myself, I still remember I feel it strongly when my startpage Netvibes didn’t work.
Here I’d like to make a survey on my readers: how many RSS feeds do you track each day?
From my own experience, I subscribe to over 600 RSS, but there are some RSS I’ve digested daily and some RSS I just give a glance. Well, it’s hard to differentiate between “digest” and “glance” as it’s post-specific, so instead I use “track”, which just means “it’s in your RSS reader”. In this sense, I track about 600 RSS.
The dear readers of China Business Watch, would you like to share with us how many RSS feeds do you track each day by commenting on the post? I really appreciate it.

Productivity and the Ways to Improve Productivity

Modern technology such as Internet and softwares are invented to boost our productivity. Yet, ironically, it’s precisely when people come to terms with softwares and Internet that they find themselves easily lost in the sea of info and lower productivity.
Boost productivity is a big topic, yet the basic rules are simple:
1. Read more with less efforts. Adequate input of new knowledge and ideas are the first step of your productivity, and luckily some handy tools can help you read more with less efforts.
2. Think after your readings. Find the similarity or the difference between different approaches to your problems, evaluate what your read, find the part that’s helpful to you, and formulate your own ideas.
3. Try to improve something. This is the hardest part, but the most valuable part of your productivity. It’s about innovation, and creativity, and trial and error, and adding new value.
4. make use of the best softwares available to streamline your working process.
5. Last but not least, cooperate wisely. Good productivity needs cooperation with others. Stay focused on what you’re doing and this is your own habit but the form of cooperation is a collective habit. So try to minimize the info noise by choosing the right communication channel.
China Business Watch will continue to discuss more about productivity since it’s vital to the success of any kind of business. And we’d like to hear from you about your ways to improve productivity. .

Craigslist, Ebay and Amazon：On-line Shopper Can Tame Them All

Gadgets are the convenient ways for one to take control of what he cares. When you put the Gadgets on Your Webpage, everything is under control.
There are countless gadgets out there, each serving a different function. I’ve been searching through Google Gadgets for quite a long time, and one grabbed my attention.
If you’re an on-line shopper, one gadget called Craigslist, Ebay, Amazon INTERNATIONAL is very helpful because it can let you search ALL 3 major online resources from one convenient location! Craigslist, Ebay and Amazon..
This gadget can be called the Ultimate International Shopping experience! Search Craigslist in any city including many countries, and Ebay and Amazon in the country of your choice.
Another good part of this gadget is that you can edit settings for your favorite country and city.
So, give Craigslist, Ebay, Amazon INTERNATIONAL a try.

Best Facebook Apps：Your Productivity Booster

For many times we have talked about the importance of productivity and the various ways to boost your productivity, either by using the right softwares, adopt the right business strategy, implement the viable business model , or just change your own habits. Right choices mean less waste of your time and resources, and ultimately higher productivity.
While many people use Facebook to connect with friends and colleagues, Facebook can also help you get things done. With Facebook apps - third-party plugins - you can make Facebook into your own personal work center. Among the thousands of Facebook apps out there, here are some apps to boost your productivity.
Writing helps
Edit documents with Documents, a collaborative text editor.
Editing
Use Picasa within Facebook with the Picasa app; you can upload photos, resize them, share images, and more.
Tracking
View your Google Calendar events within Facebook with the GCal app.
Stay on top of the hip and the happenin' with the Upcoming.org application; get info about events before they happen.
Feeds
Share what you're reading via the Google Reader app; displays only your shared items.
Files/Storage
Files gives you up to 1 GB of free online space from which to share any kind of file: text, audio, video, etc. (Requires a Box.net account.)
Swap and share files with Divshare, up to 200 MB in size.
Media
Keep track of your Netflix queue with the Netflix application - you can view others' lists as well.
Of course, there are many more Facebook apps that are productive, so tell us your favorite Facebook applications in the comments.

FeedDemon and NetNewsWire : Free Downloads

For the heavy consumers of RSS, you need some heavy-duty RSS readers. Web-based rss readers such as Google Readers and Netvibes are ok, but for me they seem to be not very stable.
Fans of desktop RSS readers, rejoice! Newsgator, the company behind NetNewsWire for Mac and FeedDemon for Windows, has updated and released all its desktop and mobile RSS readers for free.
NetNewsWire and FeedDemon are highly regarded and generally considered the best RSS aggregators that money can buy--and now, you don't have to pay anything for them.

Management of Communication Medium: About Your Productivity Issue

The medium of communications is many nowadays: IM, Email, RSS, phone, and the lack of medium: a face-to-face meeting.
I use Gtalk a lot and I'm a big fan of Twitter. The Twitter service is essentially public instant messaging. For me, instant messaging( IM) is very time-consuming and leads to more disturbing and low productivity. And, IM, even the public kind, still has its limitations as a communication medium. In fact, many people abuse instant messaging, and the info noise is very disturbing.
We have compared e-mail and RSS, both of which have some limitations. Email sometimes can let one very easily misunderstand what was going on. For people that are trying to do strategic or complex things through email and it's the wrong pipe to be using. In this kind of situation, phone and even a face-to-face meeting are recommended.
For the rational users of medium of commutation, knowing the limitations of the medium of communication and knowing the need to escalate the conversation to a more appropriate communication medium is a must.
p.s.
I have shared this post to many of my friends and many of them say they have never thought about it before and that this post seems to have been written just for him/her. And in my circle of friends, info noise seems to go down.
The management of communication medium is important. The choice of communication medium is limited by the time and place, and most importantly, by you and your partners. After you and your partners know when to switch from IM to email, from email to phone, and when have a face-to-face meeting, I’m sure You'll have a more productive conversation when the right choices are made.

Netvibes Is OK?Google Reader and Blogline FeedDemon More Reliable?

It’s very surprising to find that my netvibes is not working property today. Netvibes says many of my feeds are not working properly or invalid. This is simply not true because I have used Google Reader and Blogline desktop reader FeedDemon at the same time. Both Google Reader and Blogline FeedDemon are performing well.
I use netvibes, just because as my startpage, I can quickly scan the news and tech news at a glance, without switching from tab to tab within other rss readers. This is a great time-saver for me, due to the large info load of my 500+ RSS feeds. The drawback of setting netvibes as my homepage, of course, is its slow loading; I have to make a compromise in this regard.
In fact, before I began to use RSS a few years ago, I set Google as my homepage, which loads really fast. But now, the time spent on searching is far less than spent on reading aided by RSS readers. Overall, Netvibes is a very good service.
I just write a letter to Netvibes group, hope they can reply promptly.
Do you think Google Reader and Blogline FeedDemon more reliable? What RSS readers do you guys use?