We are excited to announce a simple integration between DeskAway and FreshBooks (a very popular web application to track your time and invoice clients on projects). When you enable FreshBooks integration you will be able to easily map your DeskAway projects to your FreshBooks projects. Time logged within a DeskAway project (from Time sheets) can also be sent to your FreshBooks project thereby keeping time logs synchronized between both your accounts.

Why should you use the integration? If you are duplicating your efforts in managing time in both DeskAway (you use it to manage your projects) and FreshBooks (you use it to track estimates and invoice clients) you now can automatically push time logs from a project in DeskAway into a project in FreshBooks!

This integration will be available on all our plans, including the free plans!

Only the account owner will be able to setup the integration.

Read more about it here or watch the video.

Do let us know what you think.

Interesting article on Mashable, by JR Johnson about how social media connects people with common ground. It promotes friendly relations and mutual trust amongst people of different cultures and thoughts a.k.a. world peace!

We are sharing unprecedented amounts of personal perspective through the online platforms mentioned above, as well as on blogs and user generated content sites like Twitter (Twitter), Wikipedia (Wikipedia), and YouTube (YouTube). This increased sharing, combined with the technological transparency and connectivity that the Internet provides, is exposing our points of common ground more than ever before. The stage is set for a positive change in the way we view “us” and “them.” The more we understand our common ground, the more likely we are to understand each other’s differences.

The online media allows people to voice their thoughts and opinions. It also allows other often unknown people to give feedback/suggestions, encouragement and support. People are connecting in a way that has not yet been possible!

The Foundation of Youth Social Entrepreneurship (FYSE) offers a Paragon Fellowship for 100 entrepreneurs from Asia. The profile of the Paragon 100 fellows includes young entrepreneurs and social changemakers of up to 30 years of age who are an inspiration to other young people.

Paragon 100 members are young people who dared to stride out by setting up their own business, social enterprise, NGO or sustainable project. They have overcome challenges by realizing their vision and believing in themselves.

Amongst the top 100 for 2009 is DeskAway’s founder Sahil Parikh!

What is also really cheering is that 48 of the top entrepreneurs are from India! Wow, India is proving itself to be one of the top countries in entrepreneurship! Check out the top 100.

Will keep you updated about the activities happening within the fellowship.

Our HQ is located very close to the Bombay Stock Exchange. It is the oldest stock exchange in Asia existing from the past 133 years!

Pluggd.in is a blog about startups, entrepreneurship and tech in the Indian sector. Sahil recently contributed a guest post on common SaaS myths and ways to overcome them.

Using online software to increase productivity and grow your business is a no brainer. I can’t imagine why any small business would not readily adopt SaaS. What’s holding them back (besides poor bandwidth penetration in some areas) when they can pay a monthly subscription, not have to worry about installation, upgrades and have access to the same tools that their competitors have? This is close to having ’software utopia’ for the small business!

Lets go back in time….

- People might not have been prepared to put their money with other people’s money when banking was established. Banking and online banking is mainstream now.

- People were probably afraid to get on an aircraft which weighed a few tones and promised to soar like a bird. Today, air travel is a given.

Back to the present.

Currently, we are witnessing one of the biggest shifts in enterprise software (software used for business) and as everything else, it comes with it’s own set of myths, mindsets and confusion. Here are a few I have experienced over the last few years from people who are still not ready to adopt online software for their business.

“My data is more secure with me than putting it on someone else’s server”

Your data is more secure at your vendor’s data center than your own internal network. Security is more than just about taking daily backups, maintaining uptime and setting up a firewall. It’s about password policies, encryption, intrusion detection, offsite backups, secure transmission, software updates, patching etc. If hosting or maintaining servers is not your core business then you are better off renting out software from a reputed vendor who understands all these things. This will ensure peace of mind in the long run.

Read More.