JPEG gets a new competitor

Microsoft has unveiled HD Photo, a new file format for end-to-end digital photography, which offers better image quality, better preservation of data and advanced features for digital-imaging applications, reports Techtree.

Microsoft said the new next-generation digital image format provides the best solution for digital image editing and storage, and unleashes potential for digital photography on devices, applications and services.

The company intends to standardise the technology, and will submit HD Photo to an appropriate standards organisation.

Samsung Electronics, Korea's electronics giant, has developed an 8GB moviNAND memory chip to be used mainly in personal devices requiring high-capacity and fast data-processing functions, reports Biz/Finance.

The chip is a new kind of a memory that combines NAND flash and a multimedia card controller, a device needed to activate memory products.

Samsung said moviNAND makes it unnecessary to have an external memory card slot in mobile devices, thus reducing their overall size. Currently, the chip with the largest capacity is a 4GB moviNAND.

Microsoft has admitted that its Live OneCare security suite has been accidentally deleting some users' Outlook and Outlook Express e-mails, reports ZDNet Australia.

According to postings on Microsoft's OneCare forum, erasures have been caused when the anti-virus program finds a virus in an e-mail attachment. Instead of then quarantining that single e-mail, users have reported that entire .pst or .dbx files, the personal folder where non-Exchange Server users' messages and other details are kept have been quarantined or, in some cases, even deleted.  

One user commented on the forum: "Is there a chance to recover it? If not, OneCare will have done more damage than any virus in my 30 years of active computing." Forum postings indicate, however, that recovery is possible in some cases, where the .pst or .dbx file is still available in OneCare's quarantine facility