Ours is the generation, straddling the analog, digital and now high-def. We remember taking photos with film cameras, watching scratchy VHS tapes, later VCDs and listening to cassettes before making the changeover to CDs. Stuff is getting outdated faster than ever before and keeping up with involves constant conversion of personal media into newer digital formats for convenience, archival value and easy access. If Con-version 1.0 was about converting VHS tapes and audio cassettes, then 2.0 involves disposal of what was once cutting-edge. The problem is that all this involves engaging in some fairly monotonous tasks that will never get done in the regular routine and cannot as yet, be outsourced easily. They’re best left to lazy days, whilst watching sitcom reruns, test matches or mindless movies that don’t need full concentration. Typical summer vacation stuff! Now most of us don’t have the luxury of two whole months like the good ol’ days anymore, but if you do, here are some summer tech projects I recommend. :

Music:
Apple has officially overtaken Wal*Mart & Best Buy as the US’ number one music retailer and while India has been slow to catch on to the legal download bandwagon, the future is pretty bleak for CDs. “Ripping” your CDs ie. converting them to a friendlier digital format like MP3 is relatively easy. You can use a program like iTunes if you’re an iPod user or the default Windows Media Player for one-click ripping. If you’re connected to the net, these programs automatically pick up song, artist and album information. You’re literally a zombie, ejecting, inserting and replacing CDs and before you know it, the music collection is fully wired!

Video:
With the new high definition format, ‘Blu-Ray’ players and discs, trickling into the market, VCD is officially TWO generations behind the curve, even as DVD reigns supreme. As most people upgrade to big-screen TVs, VCDs will look stretched and awful. The only displays that will justify their existence are the ones on small portable media players such as the iPod Touch or the Cowon A3. Ripping VCDs though is much more painful than CDs. You have to pop the disc into your PC and open the MPEGAV folder, in which you’ll see many files with .DAT extensions. Typically, the largest sized file will be the movie while the rest will be annoying trailers that VCDs usually force on you. Rip the movie into a compressed format such as MP4 using a program such as Free iPod Video Converter available at jodix.com. The next problem is that most VCDs are spread over 2-3 discs, which means you have to repeat this fairly time-consuming process for each disc. After half an hour or so you’ll have three MP4 files which need to be stitched together. Yamb is one of the simplest programs for this and can be downloaded free at softpedia.com or download.com.

Documents & Photos:
This is most worthwhile one. Buy a basic scanner, and just put your head down for a whole day - you won’t regret it. On most flatbed scanners, you can arrange four or five photographs in the preview and select them individually for final scanning. Some of the higher end visiting card scanners are easier to use for small 4×6″ photos. Most scanners will save multi-page things like passports or contracts into a single PDF file - all you have to do is remember to ’scan as document’ and not as ‘image.’ Trust me, the effects on quality of life of this one-time painful task are immense. About nine months after the fun and frolic, when nasty surprises come your way (I’m talking about tax deadlines, whatever were YOU thinking?) you’ll be grinning like a Cheshire cat!

I would highly recommend outsourcing these tasks to your kids, especially during hot summer afternoons, when there isn’t much to do. If you have some to spare, do get in touch - don’t worry, I have considerable experience in exploiting underage labour for technological pursuits. I remember one particular summer vacation just after first year of college, when I wanted all my hand-written articles and essays converted into digital format. Having just turned 18 and with more interesting things to do, I decided to offer my 13-year old brother the task. About a week of 4-hours-a-day labour for 50 bucks. My brother couldn’t believe his luck: “FIFTY whole bucks AND I get to use the computer? All to myself? Which means if I type it out fast I can use the remaining time to play games? Deal!” Sigh. No wonder, the Indian IT industry was my calling as a journalist - I’d understood the business model way before its time!