Is tomorrow the day Research in Motion co-CEO Jim Balsillie finally spends some of his hard-earned Blackberry dollars to purchase the NHL's Pittsburgh Penguins? When asked yesterday while attending the Toronto Maple Leafs' home opener if the rampant speculation was true, all Balsillie would say is "tomorrow", which is a telling departure from his previous "no comment" comments.
Update: According to reports out of Pittsburgh, Balsillie bought the Penguins for $175 million. Now, wouldn't it be cool if he moved the team to Hamilton or London, and Sidney Crosby got to play his home games in Canada? To put the Penguins' purchase in context, Balsillie's stake in RIM is worth about $1.4-billion. What will make Balsillie different from other NHL owners is he's a huge hockey fans who still plays hockey every week. Maybe he'll change the Penguins' name to the Hamilton Blackberries or the London Pearls.
Update II: I dropped Balsillie a congradulatory e-mail after the news of the deal became official. Much to my surprise, he responded within minutes. Among other things, Balsillie's got a lot of class.

Freshbooks has unveiled a new version of its Web-based invoicing service - v3.5. One thing that makes v3.5 different is Freshbooks asks for the user's profession/industry. So what do you get for disclosing some personal information? Well, Freshbooks will produce comparative business metrics that users can apply to their own businesses. Freshbooks is also going to sift through its records for the best performers in each sector, and then interview them for tips that will shared. Here's the Freshbooks post on its plans.

There's a lot of buzz this morning about the launch of Google Gadgets - a collection of 1,000 mini-services (Javascript) that you can put on your Web site or blog. Frankly, it's much ado about little (although anything Google does tends to be a big deal). I went through the Google Gadget menu, and there were, at best, a handful of services one would describe as compelling or must-have. Of course, others such as Fred Wilson will likely spend most of the day pimping up their blogs with new widgets. Another player in the widget/gadget game is Widgetbox.

Last weekend, my wife delivered a beautiful baby boy. Like any proud parents, we took dozens of photographs. A few hours later, I sent out an e-mail (with a photo attached, of course) of the baby to friends and family - a much more efficient tool than having to call people around the world. For many relatives, you also need to make paper-based photographs so I went to the grocery store and placed an order on a Kodak machine for 24 cents each. It struck me after finishing how cheap and easy digital photography has become in such a short period of time. It wasn't that long ago that you'd have to pay 50 cents or 75 cents for a digital print, which defeated the purpose of using a digital camera. Today, digital prints are so inexpensive you can print to your heart's content. At the same time, digital cameras are getting easier to use and the picture quality is has improved in a major way better. For investors looking to jump on the digital bandwagon, Shutterfly just completed an IP0, although it has slumped slightly from its issue price.