hello, are there any programs or websites that will look at a JPG and see if it is properly formed, meets specifications, etc.

It's very simple, if it is not "properly formed" it will not open correctly in a browser.

Ummm, thanks. For those who might be interested in viewing the contents of a jpg (as per my subject line) here is something you can do, which I recently found out:
1. Use a text viewer such as Text Wrangler to view a hex dump of the file. If you open it properly the ascii characters will be visible and the other characters will be suppressed.
2. Go to the following website and see what the first few ascii characters should be for a jpg. This will tell you if the file is really a jpg or another type of file masquerading with jpg file extension.

http://www.mikekunz.com/image_file_header.html

Right, so you wanted to do a hex Dump of the file or see the binary content. And on a Mac as well if you are using TextWrangler.

For Windows users You can do the same thing with Notepad

The file header is usually the first 32 bytes of the file and JPEGs may also be identified as JFIF.

Do take note that using this method may not always indentify a malicious executable file 'spoofed' as another type, as In segmented exe files the true header may be in a different segment with a offset marker to where the header is located.