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Filed under: Business, Text, Utilities, News, Windows, Office, Productivity, Microsoft

Microsoft's converter for previous Office versions

Office 2007 converterMicrosoft has (finally) put out a converter tool for use in Office 2000, 2002 (Office XP) and 2003 to use the new OOXML document formats. This means you can open and edit documents from Office 2007 in previous versions of Office. This "compatibility pack" works for PowerPoint, Excel, and Word documents which is a godsend for anyone who is currently (or planning to) straddle the Office 2007 fence. You could say that this little app serves as the link from the new world to the old world, or the link between crazy, early-adopter, beta-testers to those less inclined to purposefully install "guaranteed-to-crash" software for the blissful fun of it. I know a lot of us have been looking for something like this, because colleagues, friends, and let's not forget our other machines have older versions of Office. So, there you go, served up nice and fresh for you at Microsoft digital headquarters. The converter is around 27MB to download, is free (one would hope it would be), and for once doesn't require you to sign away your new hummer and give a quart of blood and a urine sample just to get it. Click the version for your language and it will begin downloading. Let me know how the converter works out for you, since I have the 2007 beta installed, so I am converter-disabled at the moment. Note that you must have at least Office 2000 SP3, Office XP SP3, or Office 2003 SP1 and Windows 2000 SP 4, Windows XP SP 1, or Windows Server 2003.

Filed under: Utilities, Productivity, Web services, Freeware

Media-Convert: Web-based converter for most everything

Media-ConvertMedia-Convert is a fairly impressive web service that will convert a file from one file format to another. That sounds pretty benign, but what's impressive is how many formats it supports. There's a good chance Media-Convert supports almost every document on you computer, including dozens of audio and video formats, a ton of common and obscure image formats, documents from Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org, and others, compressed archives, and more. One particularly neat trick it can do is convert PDF documents to Adobe Flash (SWF) movies. It can also capture web pages as images, convert Microsoft Access databases to Excel spreadsheets, and, in case you're into this sort of thing, convert text documents to morse code. Of course, it's not lightning-fast. You have to upload your file or enter the URL of a file and then wait awhile while it's converted, but far as convenience and price (free!) goes it can scarcely be beat.

[Via Lifehacker]

Featured Time Waster

Forumwarz - a potentially offensive time waster

I pwn UAfter spending the better part of an hour on Forumwarz I still can't decide if it's just sick or if it's kind of fun. It's a bit like a car wreck on the highway. I know I shouldn't be looking but I can't quite turn away.

It's sick, it's twisted, it's the internet on it's worst level and darn it, it's kind of fun. At least for a little while.

Forumwarz is a parody role-playing game that takes place on the internet - or at least the Forumwarz version of it. Your goal is to complete missions that are given to you through a mock up of GoogleTalk called Sentrillion.

Your first "friend" is ShallowEsophagus who begins giving you missions to pwn various forums by being a troll. Depending on the character type you are assigned at start up, you have tools like drooling on the keyboard or bashing your head on the keyboard that you can use to destroy forum threads and eventually, pwn a forum.

Future missions involve buying illegal software from the Russians, pwning more difficult forums and other internet oddness.

Completing missions gives you cash, called Flezz in game, and items that you can pawn or use in other missions. The game is NOT for those easily offended. It's crass, coarse and there are frequent f-bombs in the fake chat sessions.

This is also a game for a more mature audience as it requires you to shop at the Drugs R Fun store to get various concoctions to improve your playing, engage in certain cyber activities to get more Flezz and just generally use a more adult perspective.

If you can get past that, here are the more enjoyable and time-wasting aspects.

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