This morning Jordan went to the media center at my school to print a file. His new computer, ready for college in the fall, was running MS Vista and Office 2007. His paper had saved as a .docx file, and he needed to print it out. But none of our machines could print it.

We’ve seen compatibility issues before: students with WPS files can’t print because our computers don’t have MS Works. A teacher saves a file as a PDF at home, notices a typo, and has to change it by hand before making copies because we have Acrobat Reader but not the Distiller. A student saves a TIFF file at home and wants to use it in her Web page, but it needs to be a JPG or GIF. Students have a hard time understanding why the different file formats don’t work together sometimes.

Zamzar.com is a Web-based file conversion tool. It can convert documents, images, music, and videos to a variety of formats. The user interface is very simple: point to the file that needs to be converted, click on the format desired, enter an e-mail address, and click “Convert.” Zamzar sends a link to the e-mail address, and the document can be downloaded. Zamzar can handle up to 5 files at a time, up to 100 MB at a time. And here’s the best part — it’s free.

As the Web grows in sophistication, we’ll need tools like this more and more. It’s good to know someone is thinking ahead and keeping it free. Jordan says thanks!

Posted Wed, 23 May 2007 00:01:05 and filed under Technology. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.