Day: January 31, 2006

Just when you thought the browser wars were over…

The public beta of Internet Explorer 7 hit today. Reaction: Dave Winer, CNET, PC Magazine/ABC News/Go, PC World, RealTechNews, Ars Technica.

The ironic thing is that the folks at A List Apart posted a new CSS based fluid three column layout today, claiming they had found “The Holy Grail,” a three column layout using CSS and a minimum of browser specific hacks. Unfortunately for them, as promised, the layout breaks on the IE7 beta.

Other notes: the Google toolbar works without complaint; my home page and default search provider settings were honored, even in the new dedicated search field; RSS (or “feeds”) autodetection works as promised; the built-in RSS reader is category aware and provides some nice search and sorting features; and lots of other stuff.

Sloan alum (re)gains the Mass CIO reins

The Massachusetts CIO controversy (short version: previous CIO shafted for trying to move Mass government away from Microsoft Office via a push for open document standards) appears to have resolved itself: Sloan (MBA 1990) grad Louis Gutierrez, currently chief technology strategist at the Commonwealth Medical division of the UMass med school, has been appointed the permanent CIO. The interesting thing is that he was the CIO of Massachusetts during the mid-90s, during the Weld and Celluci administrations, prior to stints at Harvard Pilgrim and other healthcare related organizations. In fact, he was the Commonwealth’s first CIO.

I predict that a lot of the noise around OpenDocument and the state will die down. With Gutierrez’s track record (the state, Harvard Pilgrim, the Federal Reserve, and UMass Medical School), I think he’ll be a little more seasoned in how he handles the issues.