I think that much productivity comes from merging two separate things you use into one. Using Outlook for managing email and tasks is more productive than using Outlook and Remember the Milk for example (not in all caes, but many).

One such example I found today is a way to get notified of news quickly in your instant messaging system. An online service, Feed Crier, will send you an instant message whenever a feed in your RSS list gets updated. This way you don’t need to check your Google Reader every ten minutes, or keep it open, you will be notified automatically.

Since most people use some IM client anyway, this is productive use of resources, even if you’re not that big on news. Personally, I’m not that big on IM, but following the news is much simpler this way, since you don’t even need to lift a finger.