The Hindu Business Line : Wave the Web wand

Wish there was some way you could do this kind of file conversion without the hassle? Try out the following Web sites. Some of them also provide detailed information about file extensions/formats.

www.media-convert.com offers a free service. You don’t have to register or install additional software to convert your files.

To convert a file located on your computer, just go to File mode, click Browse and choose the file, select input format and output format, submit the form.

To convert a file located on a Web server, you will have to check the URL mode, enter the file URL, select input and output format.

The maximum file size you can convert is 150 MB. According to the Web site, it supports main formats such as Raw text, HTML, XHTML, Microsoft Word, RTF, PDF, PS, Open Office, Star Writer, Pocket Word, and Word Perfect, CSV, dBase, Microsoft Excel, Pocket Excel, Lotus 123, Quattro Pro, Star Calc, Open Office spreadsheet, MathML, Star Math, Open Office math, Microsoft Powerpoint, Star Impress and Open Office presentation. The site also lists various types of file formats under these heads: archives, image, sound and movie.

You can also capture your favourite Web site as an image and download it.

www.zamzar.com supports file formats in five distinct categories — document, image, music, video and other formats. You can see the exact conversion types in the ‘Choose the format to convert to’ section. For free users, the Web site has a maximum file upload limit of 100 MB. You will need to enter your e-mail address to receive converted files. For the free service, the Web site stores converted files only for a 24-hour period.

When converting more than one file, the Web site gives you the option to download all your files in a compressed zipped format. Once downloaded, you can unpack the compressed zip file that contains all your converted files. You will need to register with the site.

www.iconv.com has an easy upload interface to convert your files. It supports conversion formats such as Unix to DOS, Mac to Unix, PDF (Adobe Acrobat) to text file, Convert to Palm Pilot doc file from text, ASCII to EBCDIC data conversion, CSV file to a delimited format, Legacy file to PDF conversion and html file to RSS feed (for this, it automatically creates an RSS XML feed out of an html page). It also comes up with other features such as determining the unknown file format, File sort (get your files sorted), Diff online (find differences between two files) and Mp3 info (gets the tag information embedded in your mp3 file).

www.fileinfo.net contains a searchable database of thousands of file extensions with detailed information about the associated file types. Each entry contains information about the file format, a description of the file, and the program or programs that can open the file. Programs for opening the files are listed for Macintosh, Windows, and Linux platforms. If you come across a file or any attachment with an unknown file extension, you can look up the file association using FileInfo.net. Simply use the search box in the top-left corner of each page to search for a specific extension. You can also view an alphabetical list of extensions using the letters above, or browse by file type using the links on the left side of the page.

www.filext.com is a database of file extensions and the various programs that use them. If you know the file extension you want to learn about, just enter it in the search box on the left and click on the Search button to get the results. According to the Web site, you can make FILExt easier by adding a button to your Google toolbar. FILExt also has a Google Desktop Gadget, which allows you to add basic search to your desktop with links to specific pages once you have found what you want.

jaish@thehindu.co.in