Up until recently I was one of the few remaining people out there without a portable MP3 player in tow. However that all changed recently when I got my hands on a Microsoft Zune. All said it’s a pretty awesome device, including a 30GB drive, crystal clear FM radio, and music and video players. This should definitely help pass some time while on the airplane throughout the year.

While migrating my music onto the device was simple enough, I’m having quite a few problems trying to convert DVDs into a recognizable format (MP4 and WMV are supported). After a number of online searches, the amazingly useful lifehacker turned up some pretty valuable links to open source projects that I thought worth passing along:

Handbrake can convert DVDs to formats supported on both the IPod and Zune. Apress author Mark Pilgrim offers a guide to the process on the Mac, although you can easily follow this for other platforms as well.

If you’re looking to go the othe way, DVD Flick: DVD Flick is capable of converting all mainstream file formats to DVD.

Jason