There are a ton of great apps out there designed to snag, convert and shovel big heaps of video onto your iPod and iPhone, and I talked about a few of them at this year’s Macworld Expo 2008 in San Francisco. Among my absolute favorites:

QuickTime Pro. Apple’s own multimedia powerhouse lets you convert a ton of different formats into iPod-ready video with just a simple menu command. It’s only $30 and well worth the price.

TubeSock. This nifty little app converts your favorite YouTube videos from the Web and save ‘em right into iTunes, where they’re only a sync away from going with you on your iPod or iPhone. There’s a free demo version that converts the first 30 seconds of video, and the full version is only $15 — much less than a single movie ticket and a small stale popcorn in most cities.

Handbrake. If you’ve got a DVD movie from your collection that you’d like to take along on your iPod or iPhone, this little open-source wonder will convert it into a Pod-friendly file quite nicely.

And even though I talked about these in the O’Reilly booth at *MAC*world, all of these programs have Windows versions as well.

I also talked about using AppleScript to handle certain chores in iTunes and on the iPod. Two great archive sites full of make-your-life-easier downloadable AppleScripts:

Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes. More than 400 scripts that help you automate life in iTunes, from adding lyrics to your song files to cleaning up dead tracks in your library. The site also has a great FAQ.

MacScripter. A huge treasure trove of AppleScripts for automatically executing tasks in iTunes, with the iPod, and in much of your Macintosh life.

It’s been a great week in San Francisco, and I’m having a fun time wandering the city using the new faux-GPS locator function that came with the iPhone update on Tuesday. I think it may have even kept me from getting on at least one occasion…