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A 19-year-old WinRAR bug is being used to install malware
Last month, a 19-year-old bug was discovered in WinRAR, a software used to extract .zip and other file archives on your Windows PC. The company was quick to patch the bug, but users who haven't updated to version 5.70 are still vulnerable. Now, opportunistic hackers are taking advantage of that. McAfee, a global software security company, revealed in a blog post that it has identified more than 100 unique exploits, with most of the targets in the US.
Dropbox lets you preview more file types without having to download
If you've ever received a ZIP or RAR file in Gmail, you'll have noticed that you can peek to see what's inside without having to download the file. If you've been hoping for a similar feature elsewhere, you're in luck: Dropbox has updated how it handles previews for a bunch of file types. You can explore a ZIP or RAR file's structure, and preview things like images without having to waste time and bandwidth on downloads if the contents aren't useful.
Decompress with The Unarchiver
When I was asked to review The Unarchiver 2.7, a free decompression utility from Dag Ågren/WAHa, I thought "Who needs this program, when Mac OS X opens most common archive formats?" I quickly found out that thousands of people rely on The Unarchiver to do tasks that lie beyond the scope of built-in Archive Utility.app found in OS X. First I spoke to a loyal user, Barry Porter, an Apple Consultants Network member from Delray Beach, Fla. He said, "I use it everyday. It's great. I haven't found an archive it can't open. I use it because the built-in program is very limited in what it can create and open. You never need to open the program, it just works in the background unarchiving stuff." That's a glowing recommendation, so I put The Unarchiver to my own test. Back in the old days, it was common practice to archive files by compressing them so that they fit on a floppy disk or CD. If you happen to have saved those files onto a hard drive socked away for safekeeping, today you are hard-pressed to open those files. The Unarchiver can decompress many file types, so rejoice, because you can actually open DiskDoubler, Compact Pro and PackIt files now. I dug up some seriously old files to test The Unarchiver. I found some .sit files from 1994 and The Unarchiver opened them. Oh joy! Anyone need an Macintosh FTP list from 1995? (Curiously though, my search for files created before 1999 found over 1000 files created in 1969. I'm pretty sure that's not right! Must be a backup from a crashed drive... but I digress...) If you use more current formats and various download sites, you may encounter RAR or Tar files. No problem for The Unarchiver there either. If you find bugs or have a problem, Dag Ågren maintains an old-school support board on which you can ask questions. Also included is support for over 29 languages and DOS and Windows formats. To install, you only need to download it from the App Store. The program runs in the background. When you double-click on the application, all you see is the Preferences window. The only time you have to interact with the program is to give it permission to write to a folder, if you want to extract an archive into the same folder in which it lives. If you're curious and want to know exactly how many different archive formats exist, first look at The Unarchiver Supported formats page. Second, take a gander at Wikipedia's "List of archive formats." This handy page explains all of the file extensions used on various platforms for archived and compressed formats. In short, if you need to open archives of any flavor, you can't go wrong installing The Unarchiver. If you like it, you can donate to help Dag Ågren's development efforts for other programs too. Requirements: OS X 10.6.0 or later
Mists of Pandaria Beta: Krol the Blade and Nessos the Oracle
Sylier over at Ace Games was nice enough to tip us off about these two rare elites he's run into on the Mists of Pandaria beta. The first, Krol the Blade, is a giant mogu who tickles my fancy for a couple of reasons, the first being that he's a Krol Blade reference, and I love the Krol Blade. More interestingly, however, he drops the Elixir of Ancient Knowledge, which is weird and cool because it gives you 300% XP gain for one hour. Next up is Nessos the Oracle, another rare elite. He drops the Hardened Shell, an item that you can throw at a mounted player and which dismounts them. In the video, you can see Sylier dismount a flying player with it. This is probably going to be a huge item for PvP realms and any world PvP. There's also a series of achievements for killing these rare elites (and there are a lot more than these two) throughout Pandaria. [Thanks to Sylier for the videos.] It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Daily Mac App: iZip Archiver
Simple handling of compressed archives is a breeze on a Mac, simply secondary-click and hit "Compress". Likewise opening a zip file is as easy as a double-click. But what happens when you want to get a bit more advanced with your compression archives? That's where something like iZip Archiver steps in. iZip Archiver is available from both the Mac App Store and directly from the developer's site. The version available in the Mac App Store is a fairly limited application, but the free version available from izip.com allows you to do a couple of things that your Mac can't do natively, even with the likes of The Unarchiver, TinyExpander or Stuffit Expander installed. Essentially iZip Archiver will allow you to create archives in .zip format, secure them with a passcode and share them via files.com. That bit of the app doesn't really add anything to the default Mac-archiving experience. But what it will do is allow you to open and edit archives without extracting them first. Opening an archive mounts it like an external drive or .dmg, and allows you to look through the contents, open, edit, rename or extract single files, as well as add to or delete items from the archive. In this way you can add files you'd forgotten to zip up, or remove files you no longer want in your archive without having to unzip and re-zip them. For small archives it only saves a little time, but for really massive archives, skipping the extraction step will save you heaps of time. iZip Archiver supports ZIP, ZIPX, RAR, TAR, TAR.GZ and 7ZIP files, so most common archives are covered. There are other alternatives like BetterZip 2 and Stuffit Deluxe to name just two, but most of them aren't free. So if you're looking for a free tool for the occasional archive modification, iZip Archiver will do the job for you for nothing. The restricted iZip Archiver is available from the Mac App Store, while the more fully featured version is available directly from the developer's site.
Friday Favorite: BetterZip
BetterZip is a utility I might not use every day, but I'm very thankful for it when I need it. It's an archive/compression utility which handles a broad array of archive formats, including ZIP, TAR, GZip, BZip2, and some that you rarely see on a Mac, such as 7-Zip and RAR formats. While the unarchiver built in to OS X can handle quite a few of these formats -- and is what I use on a day-to-day basis -- BetterZip adds a few very useful tools to the mix. BetterZip opens or creates your archive in a file-list format, and you can drag files between Finder and BetterZip to add to or extract from the archive. Creating new archives is just a "File->New" or Command-N away, and you can save them in Zip, TAR, TGZ, TBZ, 7-Zip or XAR formats. While the Finder lets you easily create archives by right-clicking a file selection and choosing "Archive," it doesn't allow you to easily edit the archive or add to it. For quick compression of one or more files for emailing, it's fine and I use it regularly, but for larger archives that need to be more flexible, BetterZip is an excellent choice. BetterZip also makes it easy to search large archives for a single file you're looking for. Read on for more reasons BetterZip is my Friday Favorite ...
Ask TUAW: Syncing photos, compressing and transferring large files, virtual printers, and more
Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we've got questions about syncing photo libraries, compressing and transferring large files, creating a virtual PDF printer, increasing screen readability, and more. As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you're using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we'll assume you're running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify).
BetterZip is a better zip
With zip support built into OS X a third-party compression utility has to bring something special to the table, and BetterZip does. Basically it allows you to open and inspect archives without expanding the whole thing first. This can be useful if you only want a few of the files that are compressed within an archive. It also does compression naturally, including encryption, splitting large archives, and stripping out Mac specific hidden files to make archives more cross-platform..BetterZip supports a bunch of formats which should cover just about anything you'll run into on the net: ZIP, SIT, TAR, GZip, BZip2, RAR, 7-Zip, CPIO, ARJ, LZH/LHA, JAR, WAR, CAB, ISO, CHM, RPM, DEB, NSIS, BIN, HQX, DD. Finally, the developer has also put together a great Quick Look plugin that supports most of the same formats. BetterZip is normally $19.95 and a demo is available but as it happens it's on sale at MacUpdate Promo until Monday evening for half-off ($9.95)
Analysis determines publisher strengths in console war
While analyst predictions for the current round of the system wars vary greatly, most analysts agree that Sony will no longer enjoy the same level of market dominance it had in previous generations. If you'll grant that premise, what third party developers are in the best position to benefit from this shift in console fortunes?A pair of analysts at 2K Advisors (no relation to the developer) decided to try and figure out the answer to that question with a new metric called the Revenue Attach Rate (RAR). Basically, the RAR measures how much money a publisher makes on system software for each unit of that system currently in the marketplace. All other things being equal, publishers benefit most when systems that give them a high RAR do well, because those system sales translate to more revenue than other system sales.Based on previous generation RARs for the major publishers, the 2K analysts determined that EA and Take Two have the most to lose from increased market share for Nintendo in this generation. Both companies showed relatively weak RARs for the GameCube, which might explain why they have each been falling all over themselves to play nice with the big N in light of strong Wii sales. Activision would benefit most from a strong Microsoft performance, given their high Xbox RAR, while THQ's relatively balanced console portfolio makes them well suited to succeed no matter who wins the battle.The full report is a little technical, but it's full of lots of good data and analysis for anyone following the business side of the game industry.[Source: 2K Advisors]
