conversion
Latest
Gold Capped: Casual auctioneering
Want to get Gold Capped? This column shows you how. Basil "Euripides" Berntsen, also of outdps.com, the Hunting Party podcast and the Call to Auction podcast will endeavor to fill your head with so much economic wisdom that you won't be able to see straight afterwards! Making money in game can seem complex. Well, it is. The real pros have addons and UI customizations most people would never bother developing, keen understanding of the chains of supply and demand in the in-game economy, as well as inordinate amounts of time to spend in the auction house. What if you're just out to fund your epic flyer, though? If you're reading my column to see whether there's a cap on the amount of gold you can stuff into a guild bank, chances are you've already carved out a niche for yourself. If, however, you don't plan on spending any more time in the AH than you absolutely need to, what can you do to make more money there than you make grinding dailies?
Dear Aunt TUAW: How can I convert my pdfs to ePub?
Dear Aunt TUAW, With the release of the iPad and as a grad student with a stock pile of PDF's of review books, whats the best, free-est option for converting them into ePub format for the iPad. Kisses & Snuggles, Your nephew Will
Wind U100 magically modded into tablet-thing, iPad UI along for the ride
Are you desperate for an iPad-like device, short on cash, and long on the desire to completely jack up your netbook? Well you're in luck, friend, as the proprietor of MSI Wind fansite Insanely Wind has crafted a device which may satiate your tablety desires. By taking a U100, removing the keyboard, relocating a touchscreen display to the bottom half of the unit, and doing some simple rewiring, user alexbates has fashioned a tablet which he says bests a device like the iPad or JooJoo with "10 times the storage, twice the speed, external video (VGA), webcam, USB ports, and built-in multi card reader." Of course, as you can tell by the photos, this mod has a ways to go before it's got the fit and finish of the aforementioned devices, and you'll have rev up a compatible, hackintosh build of OS X to make it appropriately Apple-ish -- but it can clearly be done. While this isn't the first time we've seen this type of modification, it's nice to see the love spreading to various devices (and done in a fashion that doesn't seem overly complicated). From the sounds of things, this project hasn't hit its zenith yet, so we'll be keeping our eyes peeled for a more complete variation of the Windlet (our name). For now, hit the read link and keep up with the unfolding saga. [Thanks, MistaBishi]
3D stole the show at CES 2010
Not sure why we've been putting this off, but we'll just come right out and say it: there's no doubt that this was the year for 3D at CES. We walked the show floor for countless hours and can tell you that just about everyone was showing something related to 3D at their booths. Most of these demos required a bit of a wait to experience them (thanks, hype), and everywhere you went people were talking about 3D. Granted, not all of that talk was positive, but it was talk nonetheless. Whether or not the technology will be seen in history as a success in the market place is obviously still up in the air, and much like a finely crafted episode of Lost, 3D at CES this year was littered with more questions than answers. %Gallery-82768%
Sony America scraps UMD-to-PSP Go conversion plans
Sony director of hardware marketing John Koller mentioned shortly after the E3 "reveal" of the PSP Go that the company was considering a "good will program," which would allow UMD owners to trade in their physical games for digital versions. However, yesterday at the Tokyo Game Show, an SCEA spokesperson told Kotaku, "We were evaluating a UMD conversion program, but due to legal and technical reasons we will not be offering the program at this time." That's quite a blow to the base of American PSP owners with large libraries of UMD titles looking to upgrade to a PSP Go -- a blow significantly worsened by the European "PSP Go Rewards" initiative, which grants three free games to PSP Go purchasers who register for the promotion using an older PSP model. This same promotion will not be coming to the US. "SCEA region will not offer a UMD rewards program at this time," due to the fact that the company has a "dual-platform strategy," an SCEA spokesperson has explained to IndustryGamers. Ironically enough, we have a "we'd rather not purchase our PSP games again to play them on a new version of your handheld" strategy going for us. It's working out pretty well so far.
Evom beta takes up iSquint's mantle, effortlessly converts video formats
While still in beta, Evom (from The Little App Factory, makers of iPodRip) looks ready to pick up where iSquint left off. It easily and quickly converts videos to formats compatible with iTunes, YouTube, your iPod, and Apple TV. It couldn't be a simpler drag-and-drop operation: drop the video on the Evom window, and select a destination. After that, Evom does the heavy lifting and (optionally) adds the finished video to iTunes. The output quality is good -- it uses the same technical foundation as ffmpegX. You get the same high quality without all the fiddly controls of ffmpegX. Evom also includes a bookmarklet that lets you save off YouTube videos to your computer with a single click. The quality of the output there mostly depends on how good the source video is, but it couldn't be easier. iSquint, my favorite "as if by magic" video conversion tool, was discontinued after Techspansion (also the makers of iSquint's bigger brother VisualHub) shut their doors last October. The VisualHub codebase is still being developed, however, in a new project called Video Monkey that Aron covered in March, which is also well worth a look. Evom is in beta, but unlike iSquint, it appears like it may cost something when the final version is released. It also appears limited to converting 60 items until it's registered, and trying to register the app leads to a non-existent shopping cart area. Even so, the simple interface and easy installation will be worth a few bucks to me. [Via Daring Fireball.]
Savory for Kindle 2 automates PDF and EPUB conversions, doesn't make James Patterson any more enjoyable
We've seen surprisingly few Kindle 2 hacks 'round these parts, and therefore few apps that run on the beloved e-reader itself. One notable exception is Savory, which monitors the device's Documents directory for files sporting either the .epub or .pdf extensions -- when one of these guys rears its ugly head, it's converted to a Kindle filetype. The only hitch is that the program (as currently available) chokes on image-based PDFs -- according to the author, images in PDFs are fine, as long as there is some text to extract. Sure, the software doesn't do anything that Amazon doesn't already do for free -- but it does make the conversion quick and painless. Ready to give it a go? Hit the read link for the files, and you'll be mere moments away from all those terrific Left Behind books someone scanned and posted on The Pirate Bay. You're welcome.
First Look: Convertbot
Last October, we posted about another iPhone app -- Weightbot -- written by Mark Jardine and Paul Haddad at Tapbots. Now the company has shipped their second app, an iPhone conversion calculator called Convertbot (iTunes link).Like Weightbot, Convertbot is a classy-looking and extremely functional iPhone app. Every detail of the user interface shows obvious thought, resulting in an app that is easy to use and look at. As with Weightbot, Convertbot also features sound effects that provide an extra level of fun.What can you convert with Convertbot? Temperature, time, volume, work, angles, area, currency, length, mass, power, pressure and speed. How do you do it? There's a rotating selector wheel on the Convertbot screen to choose the type of conversion (temperature, for example), and a button to select the units (degrees Fahrenheit, for instance). To enter the known unit, you tap the converter display to bring up a keypad for tapping in numbers. As you tap in the numbers, Convertbot is busily converting the units. If you're an aspiring developer and want to see a well-designed app, or if you're an iPhone or iPod touch owner who just likes cool apps, check out this US$0.99 app. There are tons of conversion apps in the App Store, but Convertbot is just too nice to pass up. See the gallery below for screenshots. %Gallery-48634%
Elgato ships 1080p-friendly Turbo.264 HD video conversion dongle
Remember that brilliant Turbo.264 video conversion dongle that shipped like, two whole years ago? Yeah, it's successor has just hit the streets, and it's as ready as ever for 1080p content. The predictably titled Elgato Turbo.264 HD plugs directly into one's Mac and converts files up to 1080p (from camcorders, digital cameras, etc.) into files that are perfectly formatted for iPods, PSPs or other media players. The bundled software also lets users preview and trim video clips before converting, and it saves folks the time and hassle of importing into iMovie, learning commands, rendering and exporting. Reportedly, a video that would take an hour to convert to an iPod-friendly file takes just 15 minutes with this here dongle, and if that's worth $149.95 to you, you're one click away from brightening your own day.[Via Electricpig]
DDD chip makes all your old 2D video 3D automatically
Add another to the CES must-see list, as DDD TriDef and Altera have teamed up to create automatic 2D-to-3D converting processors. Slated to run demos on a 46-inch Hyundai IT 3D LCD , the opportunity for plug and play 3D could make for an easy transition, just like the jump to HD (ha!) While you collectively shudder from horrible memories of the old days of high definition, we'll ponder whether this is the same sterescopic 3D chip Samsung is testing with an eye towards a late '09 release. Considering their long track record with DDD finding this hardware a home next to your MediaLive Digital Media Adapter doesn't seem to be entirely unreasonable speculation.
Night of the Living Dead (1968) returning in 3D to theaters, DVD & downloads next year
Not satisfied with simply colorizing and restoring old black & white films, Legend Films is making the jump to 3D, teaming up with PassmoreLab to bring Night of the Living Dead (the original 1968 flick, now colorized, not the 2006 3D remake) to 3D screens near you. By that we mean, really near you, after a limited run in theaters starting April 1, 2009 the new version is coming to DVD and downloads (including allegedly hilarious commentary from former MST3K talent, if that's what you're into.) Legend Films prez Barry Sandrew is calling it the first full-live action feature film to be converted from 2D to 3D, now that a film most have already seen making the jump, is this enough for you to buy into the 3D hype?
AMP offers converted all-electric Saturn Sky in limited run
If you've been bored by your limited all-electric vehicle choices, we've got just the thing for you. After a year of development, Advanced Mechanical Products (or AMP) is taking orders for a limited run of 300 converted Saturn Sky Roadsters, which will be 100 percent electric. The cars can travel roughly 150 miles on a single charge, go 0 to 60 in under six seconds, and can reach a top speed of 90 MPH. The cost of the conversion and vehicle comes to around $50,000, making this one of the more affordable high-performance options around. The cars are expected to ship to buyers in 2009, so you'd better get on that list quick.
16-year-old converts gas truck to electric, reminds us of our wasted youth
We don't know about you, but we were doing far, far less productive things than Andrew Angelloti when we were 16. The green-minded youth -- a forum member over at Ecomodder -- has taken his 1988 Mazda pickup truck and converted it to run solely on electricity using $6,000 he'd earned as a part-time lifeguard. According to Andrew, the truck reaches a top speed of 55 MPH, sports a range of 40 miles per charge, and has acceleration that's, "Not that bad." The mod uses 20 flooded lead-acid batteries (for 120 volts), and a 60 HP, 9-inch electric motor. For most of us, that one major conversion would be enough, but Andrew is cracking away on his second EV mod, working his magic on a 1992 Toyota Tercel and gunning for more speed and a larger motor. Who said kids were lazy these days?[Via Digg]
Tabletop WoW: A roll of the dice
Gamasutra has an interesting article exploring the creation of the World of Warcraft line of gaming books released by White Wolf's Swords and Sorcery imprint. Written by Luke Johnson, the co-developer of the line from White Wolf's end, it has a lot of good detail for fans of tabletop (or pen and paper, as my circle of geekish souls always called it) roleplaying games as to the challenges and difficulties of converting a sprawling property like WoW from the rigidly controlled computer game to the much more expansive format of live gaming.I own pretty much every book White Wolf's put out (both in terms of their WoW property and in general, I buy a lot of gaming books) and I have to say I found Luke's points about how the relationship between White Wolf and Blizzard as far as developing the lore in these books to be absolutely fascinating. Blizzard clearly wants to keep the development of the property and its lore firmly in their control, which on the one hand is totally understandable and yet on the other hand really shackles the writers hired to work on these books. You can't just throw in that Orcs like to eat human babies - any cultural note, even an offhand reference to humans having a lot of festivals throughout the year or trolls not liking large groups, needs to be accepted or rejected by the folks at Blizzard, which can really slow down the production of the books. The upside to this kind of supervision is that the RPG line can be used as a sourcebook for troubling lore questions for nerds like me. The downside is that it takes much, much longer to release the books if they have to go back and forth to Blizzard and wait for the team there to have time away from making the MMO in the first place to check what you wrote and decide if they want Harpies to be offended by flutes. The tightrope they walked between providing content and satisfying the folks at Blizzard is a problem I'd not considered in adapting something like this.
Handbrake 0.9 released with speed, quality enhancements and more
Handbrake, the reigning king of effortless DVD conversion software, has received a major update to v0.9.0. New in this version is a "re-envisioned" interface for the Mac OS X version (as well as a completely rebuilt UI for Windows), and picture quality has been improved quite a bit through new effects, filters and deinterlacing techniques. Overall speed has also been boosted, and you no longer have to customize your encoding settings for the iPhone, thanks to new presets that simplify the process.Altogether, nearly 300 changes were made for this new version, so head on over and give it a spin.Thanks Jim
Essences to Motes, pros and cons
We had an idea like this a while back, but now Sweet from Korgath has come up with an even better one. Make 10 Essences equal one Mote just the way that 10 Motes equal one Primal. Since 2.1, Essences (the random crafting widgets that used to drop in Azeroth) are dropping in Outland, and since most of the recipes that use them are pretty old by now, players don't have much to do with them. Way back, we'd suggested an Alchemy Transmute Essence-to-Mote recipe, but Sweet's idea is better-- why not just make them all the same thing?Drysc rains on the parade, however, by saying that because Essences drop so much back in old Azeroth, it would be necessary (in his view) to nerf their droprate there. And that in turn, would cause problems for lower level players who couldn't make it to Outland (Drysc assumes that lower level players are still farming Essences the way all 60s used to, but I might disagree with him there). Also, he says, it would increase the amount of Motes and Primals floating around, obviously, and Blizzard doesn't want those to be super easy to come by.But surely there's some conversion rate they could hit on which would make Essences worth just a little more than worthless at level 70. If too many Essences drop in Azeroth, then make it 15, or 20, or whatever. Better than vendoring stacks of Essences picked up while Mote-farming just because no one will buy them on the AH.
Roxio to announce Crunch, a new video conversion app
Looks like VisualHub and iSquint are going to have some competition on their hands, as Roxio on Monday will announce Crunch, their own entry into the software video conversion market. With computer-based video leaving the nest for devices like the Apple TV, the iPod and soon the iPhone, tools that can easily convert video from a plethora of sources and formats are becoming ever the more useful. Roxio looks to make a decent splash in the market with Crunch, as it features their typical UI (which, personally, I detest) and a nice array of features, including batch encoding of multiple files, conversion of DVDs created with Toast, iMovie, and other video editing apps (in other words: it won't rip and encode commercial DVDs), support for a very wide array of video formats including the elusive MPEG-1, presets for specific devices and one killer and rare feature you don't see in many (if any) other apps: encoding from VIDEO_TS files that are ripped straight from a DVD.Still, all this comes at a price: Crunch will cost $50, whereas similar solutions that don't do DVD or VIDEO_TS conversion, like VisualHub, can be had for half that. Still, we'll have to reserve a final judgment until we can get our hands on a copy. Until then, check out our gallery of Crunch screenshots to get a better perspective on whether you should try out a demo.[Correction: VisualHub does convert VIDEO_TS folders as of version 1.1; our apologies.]%Gallery-2967%
D-PA relaunches to hasten 2011 DTV cutover in Japan
Yes, the beginning of the end if officially upon us, and yes, the Japanese are still probably more interested in colonizing the moon with robots than worrying over that pesky DTV cutover, but "a stronger and larger Association for Promotion of Digital Broadcasting (D-PA) will be relaunched next month, merging two separate organizations" in an effort to "speed up" the adoption of Digital TV. The newly-formed entity is now supported by "local broadcasters, mobile phone service providers, and TV manufacturers," and essentially hopes to broaden the marketing efforts in order to "achieve a target goal of 30 million DTV sets sold in Japan by March 2008, or about 63-percent of the country's 48 million households." Of course, the D-PA should probably get started on fleshing out an actual set of guidelines for making the switch by 2011 if they hope to garner any sort of following, but they should really take heart in the fact that they've got an extra 24 months to get things in order compared to we Americans.
Make your videos PSP compatible online
Do you want to convert videos for use on your PSP without the hassle of downloading and installing any other programs? Well, for the few of you out there, there's a new solution for you: Media-Convert. The site will let you upload your own files, or simply copy-paste a URL, and have them converted into a PSP-friendly format. It's incredibly easy, and as a bonus, lets you save your results on their servers for up to 6 days.However, there's a huge drawback: the quality really sucks. In my opinion, it's barely watchable. For higher quality vids, you'll probably want to stick with PSP Fanboy Theatre.[Via Pocket Gamer]See also:Convert YouTube videos for PSP really easily
ADS Tech's Instant Video To-Go offers up iPod / PSP video conversion on a USB stick
Sure, there's a myriad of fairly technical methods to convert DVDs, media clips, and TiVo captures to files that play nice with your iPod, PSP, or other portable video player, but ADS Tech is hoping to give us all an easy way out of transcoding every file in our ever-growing media library. Touted as the "industry's first hardware-based H.264 conversion solution for PCs," the Instant Video To-Go comes in a handy USB stick format, and houses a "hardware accelerator" that enables consumers to convert videos for handheld playback "up to five times faster than real time." The device reportedly supports MP4, MP3, AVI, WMV, MOV, RM, JPG, TIFF, and MTP, and provides a "two step procedure" for getting your videos ready for your PMP. Moreover, it can supposedly squash 100 minutes of MPEG2 / VOB into a 320 x 240 H.264 file in "approximately 20 minutes," which ain't half bad if things really work as described. Nevertheless, ADS Tech's sure-to-be-popular device will set you back just $79.95, and should be available on the web right now.[Via CNET]
