After you’ve got a bunch of media on your hard drive, before long, the need arises to convert it from one format to another. For example, let’s say that the music file is in the “Windows friendly” WMA format, and you want to put it on your iPod that won’t play the format. One option is to hunt around, and download a file convertor utility that can make the switch (for that particular conversion, I use this). However, it’s easy to cook up a scenario that this will not work for, like you can’t find a utility to make the conversion, or you’re on a ‘puter not your own, that for one reason or another you can’t start installing software on, like at work.

The good news is that I recently heard about a “Web 2.0″ service called Zamzar. The idea is that you upload the file, they do the conversion, and then they email you a link to download your converted file from. No mess, no fuss, and you don’t even need to find a plug in, or converter. What types of formats you may be wondering? It works with four major classes of files: documents, images, audio, and video. I’m sure that most of us can attest to the fact that video can be particularly a pain in the butt to convert, so this is particularly valuable in my mind. It works with the major formats in the image and audio categories, and it’s more than most of us have the software on our desktops to do.

While this sounded promising, the skeptic in me decided to put this to the test. I headed on over to the Zamzar homepage. Step 1 is to browse your hard drive and find the file. Step two is to choose the file format that you want it converted to. For this test, I started with an MP3, and converted it to a WMA. Third, we enter our email address; it’s great that we don’t even need to setup any account or provide any more info. By clicking convert, the file then uploads. You need to stay on the page or the the conversion won’t be completed. When the upload is complete, then they email you a link to download your converted file. It only stays open for 24 hours so don’t wait too long. I downloaded my converted file, and it played fine. For the record, it stayed at a constant bit rate of 128 kbps, and sounded the same as the original, without any errors.

The only limitation is that you can only convert 100 MB of data per email address per 24 period. Because it is web based, this will work fine for Apple and Linux users as well, which have even more of a challenge to find the correct conversion software.

Zamzar is a valuable file conversion tool, that users should keep in mind for their file conversion needs. Once you know about it, they’ll be plenty of uses for it to convert all types of files. While I wouldn’t want to pay their bandwidth bill, I think they provide a valuable service that I’m confident we’ll be hearing more about in the months ahead.
–Jonas

Give it a try here.