SEO Werkt!

On the heels of Box’s strong growth in 2011 — now at 8 million users and 100,000 businesses — and plans to offer the service to the Feds, comes another sign of the enterprise-cloud storage startup’s fast growth: it is moving into Europe.

Today the company is announcing a deal with Podio, a social business collaboration platform, to offer storage services to Podio customers.

Those customers today officially number at 40,000 but unofficially are “quite a lot higher” says a spokesperson. The company expanded to the U.S. last year and plans to give an update on growth in March.

Box has been around since 2005 but it is only more recently that the company’s business has really taken off — and so it makes sense for the company to put deeper roots into partnerships with international companies that can help the business grow more there.

Podio tells me that it is the first European partner for Box. Although technically Box already integrates with some 150 platform partners including those with international reach like Salesforce.com, Google, Jive and Yammer, this one more specifically will mean another social networking platform that Box can offer to its 8 million users.

Podio has been ramping up its partnerships at a faster rate of late: the Google partnership — to integrate the Podio platform with Google Docs — in fact was only announced a couple of weeks ago.

For Podio, a social network for businesses that lets those who use it create apps to enhance the functionality of the service (or a “Yammer with apps,” as we once called it) the deal gives its users another feature — cloud storage from a well-known brand — to add to the list already offered by other partners.

Those partners include Google Apps, Campaign Monitor, Evernote, FreshBooks, Instapaper and Zendesk.

Small business payment management service ZenCash launches Monday, hoping to help startups and freelancers get paid on time.

“ZenCash helps you manage your payment plan of attack and manages the plan for you,” said ZenCash founder Brandon Cotter in an interview with VentureBeat, ”[With ZenCash] you don’t have to be the bad guy, you can let someone else do the dirty work.”

Startup owners and freelancers usually rely heavily on payments from their customers and clients to keep themselves in the black. ZenCash founder Brandon Cotter found that many startups and freelancers he talked to were encountering problems with getting paid, so he sought to do something about it.

ZenCash offers services that reward clients for making payments and go after those that don’t. The company will send out thank you notes and/or gift cards to customers who process payments on time. For customers who delay payment, ZenCash will make phone calls, send letters, and eventually send your dispute to a collections agency on your behalf. Each service has a price attached to it, and you pay per phone call or email sent out. If your invoice has to go to a collections agency, ZenCash takes a percentage cut of the payment amount.

The service integrates with existing accounting software such as Clio, Harvest, and QuickBooks. ZenCash accounts are free for now, but because Intuit charges for access to the QuickBooks API, the company may charge a subscription fee in the future.

Cotter started ZenCash because as a business owner, he found it a hassle to devote time to resolving payment disputes. He also realized that many businesses want to maintain positive relationships with clients and didn’t want to get involved with payment disputes and collections calls.

ZenCash faces competition from accounting services such as Freshbooks that can send out payment reminder emails. Freelancers can get support from sites such as Elance, which will facilitate payment disputes between contractors and clients. And of course, startups can make calls, send out thank you cards, and contact collections agencies themselves.

The company’s founders have invested $500,000 to launch the company. ZenCash is made up of a team of six, scattered across the U.S. and Europe. Its main headquarters is in Dallas, Texas.

Filed under: VentureBeat

If you are a freelance writer, designer or consultant, you’ll certainly get involved in projects where you need to bill your clients by the hour. But how do you track your time accurately so that both you and your client will be happy?

There are several solutions available (both free and paid) which help you with this task. For example, if you are using Firefox or Google Chrome you’ll certainly find extensions that do it.

The problem with most of those solutions, though, is that require you to actively start the timer when you start working on a client’s project, and to stop it once you are done. Sounds simple enough, but what if you working on multiple projects at the same time? Or if you are working on a client’s project when you decide to check your email or chat on Facebook for some time? As you can imagine, it becomes a mess.

Is there a better way? Yep, and it’s called Chrometa. It’s basically a time tracking software that automatically starts and stops your timer for you, depending on what activity is going on on your computer. Here’s a small video illustrating how it works:

How does the software know to what client the work you are doing belongs? You can create keyword-based rules and the times will be assigned automatically according to those keywords.

On top of that you can also create invoices on the fly or export your time to a third party billing system (like Freshbooks). Here’s a screenshot of the user interface:

The basic version starts at $19, but you’ll probably be able to make that money back in a matter of days once you start tracking your time more accurately. Reading through their testimonials there were users who increased their billable time by 20% once their started tracking time spent with email, drafts and so on. Here’s the link to their website if you wanna check the product out.

Want to start making some money with your website? Join my OnlineProfits.com training program today, it’s free!

The Sparksheet team is heading to Toronto this week for Dx3 Canada, the first-annual trade show and conference about Canadian digital marketing, advertising and retail. The event takes place on Wednesday and Thursday at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

As Dx3’s official content partner, we launched a special micro-magazine – the Dx3 Digest – filled with original think pieces and Q&As with top execs at Canadian brands like Roots, The Bay, Freshbooks and Casale Media.

Sparksheet will also have its very own booth on the trade show floor where you’ll find us shooting video interviews and promoting our Sparksheet Events content services. We’ll also be covering the full slate of awesome Dx3 conference sessions, which were expertly curated by our good friend Ron Tite.

The trade show floor is open to all so if you’re in the neighbourhood make sure to stop by and say hello (you can register for free online).

Sparksheet readers are also entitled to a discount on Dx3 sessions: Use promo code  “dx3sparksheet” when you sign up.

For topic-by-topic breakdowns of can’t miss sessions, check out our Dx3 Session Guides.

And to get to know Dx3’s big name exhibitors, speakers and stakeholders before the show, visit dx3.sparksheet.com