If you have a bunch of older Office documents to convert to the Office 2007 format and you want to do it quickly, tech blog Digital Inspiration offers an excellent tutorial on getting it done. No need to open and convert each individual file—instead, you can convert entire directories in bulk.

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Windows only: Free application Xrecode converts your audio files from popular formats to any of the same formats. While it may not have the complexity and advanced features of previously mentioned MediaEncoder Audio Edition, it's also less complicated to use—just drag files you want to convert into Xrecode, choose the output format, and get started. Xrecode also sets itself apart with smart options for splitting audio by CUE files or by silence—perfect for quickly splitting large audio files, like your vinyl-to-MP3 conversion. Xrecode is freeware, Windows only.

We've previously pointed out ways to grab just the text from a PDF by emailing Adobe and using desktop apps, but having a web-based solution bookmarked could be pretty helpful as well. PDFTextOnline is a free, no-registration web app that quickly accepts files and pushes them to plain text, available for copying or saving as a .txt file. The added bonus is being able to change both the font and layout style of the exported text, along with access the bookmarks and properties from the original PDF. The web app claims to handle a number of foreign languages and fonts, so it might make for a good go-to-go solution if your PDF just won't open anywhere else.

Windows only: Free application ASCGEN, or Ascii Generator dotNET, takes in standard pictures and puts out images generated entirely from simple computer text. While free web apps like ASCII-O-Matic do a decent job with small face portraits, ASCGEN can handle larger files and offers the same kind of brightness, contrast and level modifications as standard image editors—it just changes letters instead of pixels. Once you're done tweaking, you can output to picture, text or HTML files. ASCGEN is a free download for Windows systems only.

Convert any online video for your iPod, iPhone, cell phone, or pretty much any other mobile device with web site Movavi. We've seen similar conversion web sites in the past (perhaps most notably Zamzar), but Movavi is focused on video, its interface is cleaner and ad-free, and it offers cool options like merging several videos into one large movie and bookmarklets for converting new videos on-the-fly. If you've been looking for a way to get internet video (or even convert files from your desktop) on your mobile device, Movavi might be just the ticket.