Lyle Backenroth » Smart

Free Online File Format Conversions: Zamzar

lyle — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:51:04 +0000

Recently, I received an MS Office 2007 Excel file — the file extension is .xlsx. Apparently Open Office does not support this format yet, and neither does older versions of MS Office.

Luckily I stumbled on a site that performs free file format conversions, from almost any format to any other format, including music, video, photo, .tar, .cab and .rar files up to 100megs. From .xls to .pdf, or .csv (comma separated value) to .jpg, just about anything; very helpful.

Zamzar.

UC Berkeley puts hundreds of academic lectures on YouTube

lyle — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 06:52:02 +0000

The University of California at Berkeley has joined the ranks of YouTube partners by providing a number of full course lectures and other special events through YouTube. The school announced the availability of its own YouTube channel yesterday, with over 300 hours of video available on YouTube. This includes lectures on bioengineering, physics, chemistry, peace and conflict studies, and other topics. There’s even a lecture by Google co-founder Sergey Brin on search engines.

Source: Ars Technica

SendUIt: The way to send large files to others & 2BrightSparks.

lyle — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 21:45:01 +0000

On occasion I need to send a large file to a friend of colleague, that’s too large for e-mail. I could use an FTP or ask the person to initiate an SSH session to one of my many Linux boxes, but sometimes the person I’m trying to give the file to is not tech-savvy to use those methods.SendUIt makes it easy. It allows you to upload a file up to 100 megabytes. After uploading, it offers you a short URL (web address) that you can give out. You can choose that the URL remain valid for 30 minutes all the way to one week.

All he or she has to do is click the link and the file begins downloading (at a good speed as well.)

If you’re concerned about security, I’d recommend encrypting the file. An easy way to do that is to use a program called Encrypt On Click: Uses 256-Bit AES encryption and is very easy to use, and it’s Freeware! Of course, both people (sender & recipient) will need the Encrypt On Click application.The company that makes Encrypt on Click (2BrightSparks) also offers other Freeware tools that I find highly useful:

Hash On Click: Gives alows you to hash any file using a variety of hash methods.

Delete On Click: Truly wipes a file you want to delete, where windows just adds a unique character to the filename allowing it to disappear from your file list, the file is still on the hard disk and readily recoverable. There are plenty of Linux-based apps that port to windows that do this, but this is simple and easy to use for the casual user.

They offer other “On Click” utilities, some you have to pay to use, but overall their applications are well-designed and simple to use.