File conversion and online tools

Recently I made a slideshow for my father's 80th birthday, celebrating his life as an artist working for the Courier Mail in the days when press artists did page composition, retouched photos and maps, did pen and ink illustration and colour illustrations for the cover of the Sunday Mail colour magazine. This was just before the days of digital photography and Photoshop. My dad retired as computers began to make inroads into the work of a commercial artist.

Anyway, on the day of the party, my brother brought his laptop along, but he had a different program for slideshows, he uses Ubuntu software as an alternative to Microsoft. My slideshow wouldn't work on the day.

Uploading it to Google Docs also seems to need a change of format, so I apply my SLQ Licence 2 Testdrive part B lesson one - I use Zamzar, an online tool to change a file format. It's a big file, but Zamzar will take up to a 1Gb file so stay tuned for the result, which will be emailed to me - stay tuned.
PS. I'm doing this at nearly midnight, showing how people can learn with this sort of online training, at their own pace, and in the timeslot that suits them best.
PPS.

Success- I had a 79 MbPowerpoint presentation changed from pptx to ppt promptly and accurately. The zamzar site only stores and allows downloading/sharing of the file for 24 hours, so you need to pay for their advanced service, but for what I want it is an excellent service. McAfee siteadviser doesn't like the popup ads but I can live with them just fine.

October 7, 2009 12:41 AM