Recently, Opera's developers have been touting it as the most compliant browser with Web standards. Now they're using that as leverage to help introduce Dragonfly, a tool they hope will promote Opera as a kind of standards watchdog.

Easily among the most useful and well thought-out extensions to Mozilla Firefox has been Firebug, an add-on by independent developer Joe Hewitt which instantly converts any active Web site into a fully-fledged JavaScript/XHTML/CSS/DOM diagnosis studio. You can see why an element is parsed and laid out the way it is by pointing at it, and letting Firebug take you to the code in question. Up until now, no tool with similar functionality and reliability has existed within the browser context; Microsoft's Web development tools are centered around Visual Studio and Expression.

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Universal Music Group has confirmed that it has agreed on terms with file-sharing site Qtrax to make its catalog available at no charge to the site's users.

Qtrax originally had hoped to launch in January, and claimed it would carry legal downloads from the major labels. However, the content owners pulled back on the reins and said that while in negotiations, no deals had been reached.

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Broadband Reports posted information yesterday provided by an "insider" claiming that Comcast is in the early development stages of a 250 GB-per-month bandwidth cap that will charge users a fee when passed.

For every 10 GB over the 250 GB limit they consume, Comcast would charge $15, says the source. Early tests could begin in as little as one or two months, and would have an appreciable effect only the top one percent of downloaders. This one percent amounts to about 14,000 customers of Comcast's 14.1 million.

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Last year, Microsoft reaffirmed its support for DAISY, the "talking book" standard developed for the visually impaired. Today, the ability for Word to save files in that enabling format has been unveiled.

Developed as an open-source collaboration project on SourceForge.net, the "Save as DAISY XML" add-in allows any Open XML-based file to be saved into the standard. It can be downloaded for free on Sourceforge.

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McAfee is warning file-sharers that they may be at risk due to a Trojan horse posing as an MP3 or MPEG file.

The security firm said Tuesday that it had detected a half million instances of the malware since Friday, dubbed "Downloader-UA.h." It is calling the incident the most significant malware outbreak in three years.

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Sony is touting European sales figures which have surpassed those of Microsoft, even though the Xbox 360 was released some 16 months before the PS3.

About five million PS3's have been sold in the region, with the console consistently outselling the Xbox on a month-by-month basis since October of last year. The news is somewhat shocking, considering the significant lead time Microsoft enjoyed.

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Adding another product to the ever-growing mix of portable hard drives, Iomega Corporation today introduced its new eGo USB 2.0 Camo, designed with a military camouflage theme and a promise of withstanding punishment.

The 250 GB 2.5-inch HDD measures .91" x 3.84" x 5.56", weighs just 0.6 lbs., and is compatible with Windows 2000 and later, and Mac OS X 10.1.5 and later. Iomega chose to make the HDD powered by USB only, so no power supply is required, thus radically increasing portability -- you don't have to lug around a power adapter.

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In an effort to scale middleware from its $420 million JBoss buyout upward to the enterprise, Red Hat this week released its JBoss Operations Network (JBoss ON) 2.0 management platform for applications running on Linux and other clients.

First announced earlier this year as part of Red Hat's Enterprise Acceleration initiative, JBoss ON 2.0 is being enthusiastically embraced by some developers.

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As shipments of notebook PCs are expected to eclipse those of desktops sometime in the second half of 2009, manufacturers are becoming more concerned about making up for the capacity and performance gaps in their hard drives.

To that end, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies today introduced the Travelstar 7K320, a fourth-generation 2.5-inch notebook drive that pushes the boundaries with several key distinguishing features.

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Grand Theft Auto IV, Take-Two Interactive's crown jewel of the sandbox game series, reportedly sold over 6 million copies of the game for Xbox 360 and PS3, earning the company over $500 million dollars in the first week alone.

Sales of the Grand Theft Auto games have historically been very swift, with composite NPD and VGcharts sales data ranking GTA: San Andreas and GTA: Vice City for PlayStation 2 the #3 and #5 all-time fastest selling games, falling only behind Microsoft's Halo series and Nintendo's recent Super Smash Brothers: Brawl.

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Sprint today renewed its WiMAX relationship with Clearwire in a very commanding way, raising the distinct possibility that they could surprise the rest of the industry by leapfrogging over AT&T and Verizon in the 4G wireless space.

Under a deal unveiled this morning, Sprint and Clearwire will combine their WiMAX holdings in a new wireless broadband company to be dubbed Clearwire, funded by $3.2 billion in investments from Google, Intel Capital, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks.

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You actually need a reliable database to keep track of the multitude of permutations deriving from MySQL executives' recent comments defending their company's right to make money off of its product.

The perennial problem among corporations that do business using an open source business model has been spelling out for its customers whether they mean "free as in 'speech,"' or "free as in, 'The global economy has collapsed, anarchy is rampant, and looting is widespread."' Since its absorption into the realm of Sun Microsystems, MySQL has had more and more difficulty appeasing a growing number of open source community proponents who worry that its commercial endeavors will divert the division's attention from adhering to the tenets of the General Public License.

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In addition to Google investing in the Clearwire joint venture upon which the future of Sprint's communications plans may rest, today Sprint says Google will be its valued partner for mobile services as well.

Sprint and Google today announced the two companies will share their properties with one another, mentioning numerous times the value of openness. The Mountain View search company becomes Sprint's default mobile search provider, and new Sprint handsets will offer Google's local search (for GPS-enabled devices), Google Maps Mobile, and YouTube accessibility.

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While touring Asian countries this week, Gates gave reporters a bone to chew on: a suggestion that Microsoft will now pursue an "independent" strategy in the wake of the Yahoo deal's failure. But independent of what, exactly?

There may not be many opportunities left in history to draw extrapolated conclusions on something Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates says about the future of his company, or of anything else related to technology. So a single phrase containing a key word uttered by Gates during a press conference in Tokyo yesterday has once again drawn the wolves into a feeding frenzy.

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Microsoft on Monday delivered its Zune 2.5 software, including several playback enhancements and better syncing and organizational capabilities.

Among the changes that affect the device directly is the option to select gapless playback. This eliminates the gaps that occur between electronic music tracks, and is especially useful for fans of live and electronic music.

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