Yup! FreshBooks’ own Support Rockstars will be on-site in downtown Toronto at the Dark Horse Cafe on Wednesday, November 11th 2009 to answer any questions you have about FreshBooks, provide support or just to chat.

The Details:

Where? Dark Horse Espresso Bar, 215 Spadina Ave.
When? Wednesday, November 11, 2009.
When exactly? 4 P.M. – 8 P.M.
Who? YOU (and us!)

Drop in when you can, coffee’s on FreshBooks!

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Jonathan is running one of the world’s most successful private equity firms — #6 on the Fortune private equity power list. Now, I don’t care much for private equity firms, but I’m intrigued by Jonathan and the firm he’s built. Why? He’s done it sleepy Providence Rhode Island instead of on Wall Street. Also, he approaches business knowing that relationships matter, and knowing it’s not just the money that talks. He’s portrayed as low-key, which is uncommon amongst private equity superstars (at least those heralded by the media).

In the Fortune article, Jonathon was being credited with the biggest private equity deal ever — the $51 billion buyout of BCE — Canada’s largest, yet beleaguered telco. While it looks like the BCE deal may not go through after all (the Canadian Supreme court is deciding today), a failed deal won’t take the shine off of Jonathan’s portrayal in my books. Why? He’s still the same man — even if the deal doesn’t go through.

I was a bit upset to find out that CBC will no longer continue to use the Hockey Night in Canada theme song as part of their opening for hockey broadcasts. Like so many others, the song has been a part of my childhood while growing up and without it, hockey on Saturday nights would not be the same. I was even more shocked when I learned that CTV was able to purchase the rights of the song after CBC failed to work out a deal with Copyright Music & Visuals.

Was it a mistake on CBC’s part to pass up on the tune that has been a part of Canadian hockey history? I think so. But they do have a contest open to the public to find a replacement song that will award $100,000 to whoever can come up with a new theme song. This will create some noise but it will be drowned out by the song we so dearly love, playing on TSN.

For those of you who want to listen to an audio clip of the theme song, it’s below. It get’s you pumped just listening to it doesn’t it?!?

Today brings great news for Canadian merchants, straight from the PayPal Blog:

Canadian dollar transaction fees for receiving payments, for all merchant rate tiers, has [sic] been lowered from C$0.55 per transaction to C$0.30.

We’ve also lowered our currency conversion rate for some Canadian sellers that receive payments in U.S. dollars and withdraw those funds to a Canadian dollar bank account.

This brings Canadian pricing directly in line with the United States.

For PayPal merchants in Canada, these changes mean you’ll start saving money immediately, whether you’re collecting your payments in U.S. dollars or Canadian dollars. It also makes signing up with PayPal even more attractive.

If you don’t know Marc Andreessen of Ning and Netscape fame, his entrepreneurial insights are head and shoulders above just about anything you can find anywhere – check out his blog.

P.S. Marc…where’s part 2?

P.P.S. I’m aware I’m due for part 2 of this.

Mr. Thornley must have agreed because he has started posting clips of that evening over on his Pro PR blog and we couldn’t be happier to share it with all of you!

Here is one of the three videos posted now and there will be more going up at Pro PR in the days and weeks to come!

Yes I know the videos are a bit hard to see but if you close your eyes you can pretend you were there and see why we had so much fun at this appearance!

…And if you found any of this interesting and would like to see it “LIVE” we will be doing this event again in June for Third Tuesday Ottawa!

[Editor's note: apologies for all the exclamation marks, but Saul makes an excellent point: "they're prettier than periods."]

For a long time, source code was viewed as a software company’s crown jewels, protected by dongles and complex encryption schemes to prevent copying and theft. In the software-as-a-service world, however, source code becomes irrelevant…If 37 Signals gave me the Basecamp source code for free, I’d still use their service. If Freshbooks burned me a copy of their app, I’d still subscribe to them. Even if Salesforce.com handed me their software, I’d use their hosted portal.

This is *so* true. As he rightly points out, “IT administrators will tell you that the cost of running any application far exceeds its license fees” and this is a big part of why Software as a Service (SaaS) is increasingly appealing.

When you consider the true costs and complexities of ongoing maintenance, release patching, backup management and training (which companies like FreshBooks deliver happily, and with a far deeper knowledge than any IT department ever could), you begin to see the true value of SaaS, and it’s clearly not just the source code.

Well, take a breath – and get an extension.

Your tax software service can probably do it online. If not – use Form 4868.

If you have a partnership or LLC filing as a partnership, or an estate (Form 1041) or trust (Form 1041), use IRS Form 7004.

The extensions are automatically accepted – no approval needed. Good for 6 months.

BUT, if you owe money, you need to pay. Drop by TaxWatch article at MarketWatch.com (it’s written by me) for tips on how to pay – especially if you don’t have money right now. In fact, read it BEFORE you finalize your tax return. You’re going to find one last way to cut last year’s taxes. But only if you put your tax return on extension.

Oh, let me dispell a rumor I just heard about extensions and the Stimulus Rebates. Some fool is spreading the rumor that you won’t get your rebate if you put your return on extension. That’s utter nonsense. You’ll get it. Perhaps a bit later. But it will come.

Happy Tax Day!

This is especially evident here at FreshBooks. When I joined last year, we were a strictly PC/Windows shop. Since then, we’ve added 6 iMacs to the grid — and more are on the way.

Resistance is futile

I, for one, welcome our new Mac overlords. To help kick-start the indoctrination process, I’ve begun using an Apple keyboard with my Windows box here at work. Sure, the buttons don’t match up perfectly (where’s the print screen button?), but with a few easy steps, you can re-map your Windows keys such that you’ll hardly notice.

Introducing AutoHotKey

AutoHotKey is freeware software for Windows XP that lets you create easy-to-write scripts that define alternate key mappings in Windows. You can do the same by hacking the Windows registry yourself – but that’s just plain silly.

The script

After you’ve installed AutoHotKey, download this script and run it (either by double-clicking or right-click -> “Run Script”). This will load a set of pre-defined rules that will make your Apple keyboard operate like a Windows one — but way sexier.

Here’s the rules I’m using:

; Swap Windows (Command) and Alt keys
; These button locations are reversed on Mac keyboardsLAlt::LWin
LWin::LAlt
; Map F13 to Print screen
; Mac keyboards don't have a print-screen button!
F13::PrintScreen

To have this script run every time Windows boots up, save it in your Startup folder (Start -> All Applications -> Startup).

That’s it! Happy typing.

That’s mesh, but I want to talk about meshU (for mesh “University”) – a one day event that’s new this year and something I’m guessing FreshThinking readers might be interested in. meshU is a one day workshop oriented conference for 150 designers, developers and project managers – people who are building things online. These workshops will be presented by people who have earned their stripes pushing the boundaries of the web, including Avi Bryant (founder and lead developer of DabbleDB), John Resig (lead developer of jQuery and standards evangelist at Mozilla), Leah Culver (founder and leader developer of Pownce) and Ryan Carson (Carsonified, makers of Dropsend, Amigo and the “Future of” conference series). Each of these individuals has a lot to offer and Mark, Mathew, Stuart, Rob and I are honored to have them contributing to the inaugural meshU and generally supporting us in an as yet unproduced event.

So, I hope you will drop over to the meshU site and see if it’s a fit for you. There will be a lot more information coming about the content over the next few weeks so stay tuned. If you want to submit a workshop proposal to present at meshU, you can do that there as well. That said, you might want to buy your ticket first as there are only 150 available, and we’ll reimburse you if your workshop is accepted.