Two Tools You'll Want to Use: TokBox & Zamzar

I'm always on the hunt for new helpful tools and I discovered two great ones yesterday...

TokBox (pronounced "talk box") is a free video conferencing service that would be a great alternative to Skype should you want a browser based video system. I've used services like this in the past and they're handy alternatives. In addition to the live conferencing feature you can also record a video and email it to someone from within the TokBox system. That feature alone would be great for personal messages for fundraisers or any organization that wants to take personalization to a new level. If my alma mater's alumni association decided to send me a personal video from the president rather than a postcard, I would certainly be impressed and would be much more likely to consider giving.

I was very excited to discover Zamzar, a free file conversion tool. If you've ever wanted to convert a file from one format to another but weren't sure how to do it, this is the site for you. If you've ever received a document in a format that won't work with Microsoft Word, just upload and convert it here. The conversion also works with audio, image, and video files. I was most excited to discover Zamzar's online video conversion. It's as easy as typing in a link from a YouTube page or any number of other online video sites and loading them into Zamzar and selecting the format you want. I tested it last night with this YouTube video to see if it would work with my new (thanks Fosters!) iPod Nano and it worked perfect.