conversion

Converting PDFs to Word documents is a crucial part of many businesses. Anyone who needs this process done quickly, efficiently and accurately should avoid Quick PDF to Word, as this program has crippling faults.

This program presents itself well. We were impressed with its interface and felt it was laid out perfectly for the job. The program provides a simple box for selecting the PDF that users wish to have converted. There is another box that allows users to direct where that new Word doc will be stored. In addition, there is an Options menu that allows for a minimum … Read more

Converting Word documents to PDFs was once a daunting task that has recently become easy thanks to conversion software. However, Quick Word to PDF is not one of those programs, thanks to its defective operation.

The program's interface looks promising, with a simple screen, professional layout with well-drawn green command icons at the top, and a simple white action screen with large blue buttons to browse files for conversion. The program's trial is supposed to allow up to 15 conversions, but we were not able to select a single file to convert. We were given an error message … Read more

Though they required minor editing, this file converter quickly and easily converted our PDFs to Word, Excel, and other file formats. We were, however, disappointed by its double-whammy of a trial limitation.

Able2Extract PDF Converter has a sleek and professional-looking user interface. Intuitive commands and navigational buttons reside at the top of the window. Novice users will especially appreciate the tips and the step-by-step guide it employs to walk you through the conversion process. The process was extremely easy and fast. Once we located our PDF, it was simply a matter of selecting the text we wanted to convert, and … Read more

I'm still processing the many great insights from the next09 conference in Hamburg, Germany, one of Europe's leading digital-creative-marketing forums. This year's theme was "Share Economy," and the 1,300 attendees consisted of European VCs and angel investors, Web 2.0 entrepreneurs, media, creative agencies, and executives from German corporations (from BMW and Deutsche Bank to Deutsche Telekom).

Jeff Jarvis: "The Great Restructuring"

The first day, the keynote day, was a little disappointing, maybe because expectations were so high. Jeff Jarvis warmed up the crowd with his trademark "What Would Google … Read more

A fully electric passenger vehicle from Ford is still a couple years away, but in the mean time, Plug-In Motors --a Missouri-based start up-- has been developing the process and technology to convert existing Mustangs and F150 trucks their current conventional powertrain to one that's all-electric.

But the cost of this environmentally conscious move doesn't come cheap. These comprehensive conversions can cost $75,000 for a Mustang or F150 with an 85-mile range or $125,000 for a 200-mile range.

The high price tag is a result of the top-of-the-line components used by Plug-in Motors, says CEO Kurt … Read more

There are several well-regarded, free ways to take advantage of the Print function to transform just about any file to a PDF. PrimoPDF and doPDF sit at the top of the list, but what about reverse engineering that conversion? Converting in the other direction, from a PDF to a Microsoft Word-compatible format like DOC or RTF is trickier.

For one thing, there's a lot of crap out there. Many PDF-to-DOC converters have similar or even identical names, differentiated sometimes by nothing more than a cunning tap of the space bar. Many offer features that are hamstrung in various ways … Read more

Continuing to stake out a different approach to torrents, the latest version of Vuze integrates an auto-conversion feature for both portable screens and your television. Available for Windows and Mac, Vuze 4.2 offers a device drag-and-drop feature that automatically converts a video torrent from its native format to an appropriate one for iTunes, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360, and then pushes it to your device.

Still in beta, the new Devices tab on the left nav will ask you to install a transcoder and a plug-in. Devices then detects iTunes or any of the devices when they're connected … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--Someone blogged that South by Southwest Interactive is just like the Internet itself: disjointed, decentralized, scattered, fast, aggressive, random, fragmented, and so on.

In fact, the main commonality between the two may be that the number of attributes to describe them is infinite. Like the Internet, the annual tech conference here is an echo chamber of an echo chamber, a place where original thought and commentary get mixed up and mashed up in a highly self-referential meta conversation.

That was already the case before Twitter entered the scene at SXSW two years ago, but the microblogging service has certainly amplified the effect. It was both comical and frightening to see the uber-individualistic geeksters at SXSW captivated by the invisible rules of an ostentatious behavioral uniformity: within 1 mile of the convention center, you could observe the strange ritual of groups of people standing or sitting together, chained to their iPhones, twittering instead of talking: "SXSW. Twittering about SXSW."

The real conversation was often limited to a quick "What's your name?" or "Where's the next party?" just to have some input for the next tweet. It is indeed a read-write generation that is coming of age in the wake of an all-dominant present, with no particular loyalty to the past and maybe not even an interest in the future (see Peggy Orenstein's recent piece on "Growing up on Facebook" in The New York Times Magazine).

Yet the rise of the social digerati is unstoppable. New data by Nielsen Online shows that social-networking sites (which encompass social networks and blogs, by Nielsen's definition) are experiencing growth rates of twice as much as any of the main destination sites (search, portals, PC software sites, and e-mail). The time spent on social networks and blogging sites is growing at more than three times the rate of overall Internet growth. Furthermore, social networks are gaining traction among new audiences. … Read more

Kindle users know they can e-mail documents as attachments to their Kindle account and Amazon will convert and upload them to the e-book reader for a 10-cent fee. Windows users aren't tied to the e-mail option, though, thanks to the Auto Kindle eBook Converter.

Compatible with PDF, HTML, LIT, PDB, and CHM files, the program opens to a Windows file browser. Choose the file you want to convert, hit Open, and then choose your destination folder. The converter goes to work, generally converting files quickly--although this depends on the length of your document.

When it's done, connect your … Read more