JPEG has been the standard for photographic images on the Web and in online presentations for 20 years. Now it's up for replacement. Microsoft -- yes, Microsoft -- is making the rounds of the Joint Photographic Experts Group conferences, promoting JPEG XR (extended range).

Sign petition: Say NO to the Microsoft Office format as an ISO standard.Microsoft is currently trying to make the ISO National Bodies believe that its Office Open XML (OOXML) format is a good standard. This website discusses why this broken proprietary standard should never be accepted by ISO.

JPEG is a very old lossy image format. By today’s standards, it’s awful compression-wise: practically every video format since the days of MPEG-2 has been able to tie or beat JPEG at its own game. The reasons people haven’t switched to something more modern practically always boil down to a simple one -- it’s just not worth the hassle.

JPEG 2000, the image file format that has been around for nearly a decade and offers better compression performance and greater flexibility in the code-stream that can allow for higher quality photographs compared to a traditional JPEG, may get a boost on the Linux desktop.

The European Commission is investigating the process under which a key Microsoft document format could be adopted as an industry standard - a move that would carry significant commercial benefits for the software company.

For years Microsoft has had the de facto "standard" everything simpy because the majority of people use it and think it is the standard. Microsoft never did anything about this. It enjoyed the de facto standard position and never actually sought to makes it formats actual standards. But in 2006 something happened.

A GLOBAL war has broken out over Microsoft's bid to make the XML document format used in Office 2007 an international standard.

Microsoft Corp ramped up its fight to have its Office Open XML document format made into an international standard on Monday as delegates from 37 countries met to reconsider the proposal.

Microsoft Corp ramped up its fight to have its Office Open XML document format made into an international standard on Monday as delegates from 37 countries met to reconsider the proposal.