The name and concept behind Pomotodo is derived from the Pomodoro Technique, a time management method developed in the late 1980s which aims to help individuals increase efficiency by managing tasks in 25-minute intervals ¹. This startup was founded by a duo from Hunan province, China, and officially launched its service this year.

Founder Sun Liang shared that Pomotodo was actually meant for internal use for his team, and the main motivation behind its creation was to present a simple yet effective means for them to focus and complete their tasks at hand. It was then developed some more and released to the public. He also mentioned that there are indeed numerous competitors around in the market, and we have found similar Pomodoro-inspired tools such as My Little Pomodoro and Pomodoro Plus HD on iTunes, but the startup developers are unfazed. He notes Pomotodo is straightforward, simple, and comes at no cost at all.

The main interface might look a bit too minimalist, but it really serves its main purpose as a task productivity tool. New users will be brought through a quick tutorial, though it would be great if they could also explain the Pomodoro technique or how the ‘Tomato Timer’ worked. I was initially puzzled as to why it was strictly preset at 25 minutes, prior to understanding what the Pomodoro Technique is about. Compared to other similar services, the advantage of Pomotodo is that it tracks work progress, and also provides a handy tool for users to note down their to-dos.

While performing the task during the stipulated 25 minutes, users can choose to play the ‘timer ticking’ sound via the settings menu if it helps to create a greater sense of urgency in order to feel more motivated to finish the task faster. However, it might not be music to the ears of some users, so thankfully the timer ticking is optional. After your 25 minutes is up, users are entitled to a five-minute break (also referred to as the completion of ‘one Tomato’) before continuing with the next 25-minute segment.

Currently, Pomotodo is only available in Chinese and accessible via web browsers. For English readers who are keen to try out Pomotodo, fret not as the team is planning for an English release in the near future, along with development for Chrome web browser extension and mobile app versions for both iOS and Android platforms.

Head over here to give Pomotodo a shot, and see if it does help to improve your work efficiency today.

The other day my colleague Charlie had his say about developments in technology and their affect on how we live. In a nutshell, he noted that technology brings immense benefits, but he also pondered whether or not we might be losing something as a result. He cited the conceptual Google glasses [1] as an example. Something like this would effectively mean that getting lost is a thing of the past.

Similarly, software like Evernote [2] means that my brain isn’t tasked with as much remembering as it used to be. My typing speed is decent these days, but my penmanship has gone down the crapper. In some Asian countries where calligraphy is more of an art form than elsewhere, there’s concern that students’ writing habits are weakening too.

Amid so many technological advances, we should be aware that there are often corresponding setbacks.

Nevertheless, I try to embrace new technologies as much as I can. It’s not unusual for me to spend hours working on some obscure workflow hack that ironically only saves me a few minutes each time I use it [3]. I’m well aware of this, but it’s more about the challenge of finding the best and most efficient way to solve a problem. For example, I could use a notebook and paper for my Chinese study [4], and it would probably be every bit as useful as a high-tech solution like the Chinese Flash app – but it wouldn’t be quite as fun. The process of finding shortcuts and elegant solutions is a reward that keeps motivation high.

But after years of being a (relatively) early adopter of the latest social site or app du jour, I’m a little more careful about where I place my attentions these days. Time is finite after all, and there should be some return on where I spend it.

Pinterest? Not interested. Instagram? Insta-meh… Byword? Yes, please. P2PU? I’ll take that too.

I should clarify that if I’m going to write about a service, I’ll set aside ample time to test it out. But whether or not it becomes a part of my daily life is an entirely different question.

I think it’s important to be choosy about these things. There is a danger in being a technology whore. I think that ultimately, choosing tools that help you make and do things is a good rule of thumb [5]. Few things are as annoying as ‘social butterflies’ who do, make, or contribute next to nothing.

I expect that since a high portion of our readership is pretty tech savvy (perhaps many are tech entrepreneurs or aspiring to be one) and that you guys know where I’m coming from. I’m curious to hear how you guys approach finding a technological equilibrium that feels healthy. Do feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

I just came across this great graphic from BestVendor, and although it was published a while back, I’m not sure how many people have actually seen it yet — so I thought I’d share it here. They surveyed 550 people at startups in the US to find out what were the most common tools that they use. And I’m sure many of these would be useful to many of our readers as well.

Some of the most popular tools will come as no surprise to you. Here are just a few of the standouts:

• Company email category: Google Apps (used by 57 percent of startups)
• Storage/Backup/Virtualization: Dropbox (used by 39 percent of startups)
• Project Management: Basecamp
• Text Editor: TextMate
• Version Control: Git
• Email Marketing: Mail Chimp (used by 30 percent of startups)
• Note Taking: Evernote

You can check out the full infographic below (larger view here), as well as another that they’ve created for design tools. I really have a fetish for this kind of tool-porn (see BestVendor or The Setup for more fun examples) because we’re always looking for new ways to better our blogging workflow here at PO. Many of us blog in TextMate, and we’re big fans of Google Apps as well. I personally prefer Notational Velocity to Evernote though, when synced to Dropbox.

We’d love to hear about your favorite tools for work, so please drop a line in the comments if you have a favorite app for work.

Most recently we started adding stock/ticker symbols in our article text and meta data in an effort to

1. provide and value to readers who want that information, and
2. hopefully increase our reach via Google Finance news.

In the beginning, we found ourselves having to constantly check what the symbols for certain companies were (i.e. NASDAQ:AAPL for Apple, NASDAQ:BIDU for Baidu, etc). But since many of us here do our WordPress blogging in TextMate, we figured that a collection of TextMate snippets (read ‘keyboard shortcuts’) would do the trick.

Tech Tickers

Click to enlarge

So now we have just that: a collection of Asia-focused tech company tickers that can be summoned with a quick keystroke or two.

We’d like to share this with other Asia-focused news sites in the community (yes, even with our competitors) because we’re all essentially working towards the same goal here. And given the amount of tech-savvy people who read this blog, perhaps someone out there has an idea of how we might improve upon it. You can download the bundle here.

And for live blogging…

We also have a simple live blogging tool that lets you add anchor-tagged time stamps to your updates (see example from our Global Mobile Internet conference live-blog). You can download that snippet here. It’s just few lines of code, and probably has no business being on Github. But it’s really useful – and improved since last time we mentioned it – so I’m throwing it out there in case anyone wants to try it (see screeshot below). There’s more information about how to use it in the readme file.

So how’s our driving so far? Aside from the content, we’d love to hear from you about how we can package information better on this site. If you have any suggestions, please let us know.