Author: Stan Shinn

Have you ever wanted an easy way to use Firefox on both a Mac and PC, while keeping everything easily portable between various machines?

With this solution you can store your Firefox settings on almost any storage device, including a portable USB thumb drive.

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This bold move by Massachusetts bears watching:

The state of Massachusetts has laid out a plan to switch all its workers away from Microsoft's Word, Excel and other desktop software applications, delivering what would be one of the most significant setbacks to the software company's battle against open source software in its home market.

Two years from now it will be interesting to see if they regret this decision, or feel vindicated. 

Read full article: Massachusetts set to switch off Microsoft

Last night I finally figured out a workaround to a frustrating Google Maps issue in Internet Explorer.

I've seen IE have problems with perfectly valid HTML in many other cases. Here's the latest IE issue.

You can't enclose a Google Map within a <div> tag and have the Google Map render correctly in Internet Explorer. I think even enclosing Google Maps within a table has issues in IE. Using the <div> tag works correctly in FireFox and other browsers though.

Here is someone else who had the same issue. 

The workaround is to use tables or other elements to format you page instead of the <div> tag.

Here is the working Google map that shows all of the Eastern Orthodox parishes in North Texas. Very cool! 

The new beta from Zimbra™ looks promising. They make extensive use of AJAX technology -- the power behind Google Maps that makes server based applications behave more like desktop software.

Zimbra™ Collaboration Suite Open Source Project Beta Launch Zimbra is a community for building and maintaining next generation collaboration technology. Currently, this technology is available as a beta version. At Zimbra, our goal is to make e-mail, calendar, contacts and other communications technologies the best they can be. We believe that by opening the technology to the community we will insure that we can maximize innovation, scale and the ability to co-exist with existing messaging systems.

View the Zimbra™ Demo

Some recent stats on RSS technology: 

A recent Jupiter Research study found that only 3 percent of the 4,000 internet users surveyed actually use RSS. A research study from Forrester Research claims that only 2 percent of all online households in America are using RSS. A Pew Internet & American Life Project report notes that only 9 percent of Americans online have a good idea of what RSS feeds are.

So does that mean RSS is not important? Not at all. Consider these facts:

Right now 87 percent of influencers, such as journalists and analysts, are using RSS to collect key information and are adopting RSS as an information gathering and tracking tool, according to a recent Nooked survey. Furthermore, Microsoft has already announced full RSS support in the upcoming Windows Vista operating system and Internet Explorer 7, which will ensure mainstream RSS adoption.

Read full article: RSS Marketing Studies

After two years of Microsoft-sponsored research heralding the benefits of Windows over Linux comes this report from IBM:

Linux's total cost of operation (TCO) is typically 40% lower than Windows, according to an IBM-sponsored report from Robert Frances Group, publicized by IBM this week.

Who to trust more, Microsoft or IBM? Hmmm... Read full article at Computerworld