Microsoft has been working on a new image format called HD Photo (), and they have been pushing to have it adopted as a new standard. They turned to the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) to get it approved, and it looks like things are on the right track. The new standard passed, and it will be called JPEG XR where the XR stands for "extended range."

It looks like one lucky user "accidentally" got the Zune 2 software update a little early thanks to a supposed mishap in Windows Update. JJRules, a member of the Zunerama forum, posted some screenshots late last week of the Zune 2 interface (version 2.1.0522.00) that is scheduled to be released in November.

Blog Action Day is here! That's right, today is Blog Action Day, the day that bloggers are encouraged to get one issue out there in the minds of all their readers.  This years topic is the environment, and the goal is for every blog to post one article about the environment today.  Given how important our environment is, we decided that we'd spend the entire day writing about it, particularly how the technology that we use affects the environment.  Today's Microsoft Monday feature was put on the sidelines while we focus all of our attention on different things that all of us can do to help the environment and make this awesome planet a better place to live.

A press release was sent out yesterday regarding the new Linspire 6.0 Linux operating system that was just released. For those of you who haven't heard of Linspire before it's probably because you have to shell out $50 to buy it. The reason you have to pay for it is that it includes proprietary software, drivers, and codecs which make the operating system ready to use out-of-the-box.

I've been excited for quite some time to see what Google would be able to pull out of their Online Presentation service, but I have to say that I'm a bit disappointed with the final result. For starters, one of the great things that they did is shorten the name of their "Office Suite" to just Google Docs (prior to this it was Google Docs & Spreadsheets), but the service is still in Beta.

Google Trends has proved to be a great way to see what's hot and what's not in Google searches. There's a lot you can learn, particularly with their "Hot Trends" which is compiled daily. It's also proved to be a great way to analyze search trends as I've done today with some of the more popular technology competitors.

Transferring files from one folder to another, or from computer to computer is something most people do on a regular basis. Have you ever thought about speeding up the process by using a file transfer utility? They’re similar to the download managers in your web browser, except they’re made to be used all around your computer.

I was recently invited to join a group for HP regarding the future generations of laptops. They want myself, among others, to share our "." This is really a great idea, and in a way reminds me of Dell launching the IdeaStorm site.

We’ve talked about Secunia’s online software inspector before. It doesn’t require that you download any application, and it operates completely through your browser. The purpose of using it is to find out-dated software on your computer.

One of the things I use the most in Gmail is the "View as HTML" feature for previewing documents, presentations, and spreadsheets that are attached to an email. This lets you scope out what a document is about without having to download it to your computer.

Microsoft announced that if everything goes according to plan (like that ever happens in the world of software) then Windows 7 will be available sometime in 2010. That gives Microsoft more than three years to round up all of their new features, plan them out, develop them, and test them.

Paint.NET is an photo and image editor that is about as feature intensive as you can get while still keeping it a fast (and light) application.

I don't think that anyone would argue that getting used to Microsoft Office 2007's new interface takes some time. I've been using Beta 2 for what seems like forever (probably about 8 months in reality) and I finally feel comfortable being able to find the commands that used to reside on toolbars and menus in previous versions of Office.

Now before I get started I want to say that I use openSUSE as my choice of Linux distribution and couldn't be happier with it. They always seem to be on top of implementing new technologies that are easy-to-use and really appealing to those who want the latest and greatest.

Going along with our recent poll, here's another question for you.  How many of you that own an Xbox 360, also own or owned at one point the original Xbox?  According to Chris Satchell of Microsoft, he's saying that so far, 10.4 million Xbox 360 units have been sold.  But, even more interesting is that he says over half of those have come from people that never owned the original Xbox.