extractor
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TUAW's Daily Mac App: Stuffit Expander
Being able to decompress the plethora of archive types that are flying about the intertubes these days is essential. Stuffit Expander, the free extract-only part of the Stuffit suite is a great utility to have when Finder, or even the Unarchiver, just can't help you out. There are quite a few free extraction tools available for the Mac. We've got the Unarchiver and TinyExpander just to name a few, but Smith Micro's Stuffit Expander handles several file formats that most others just can't, including Smith Micro's .sitx files, with aplomb. It's simple to use, either open the archive from Finder with Stuffit Expander, drag-and-drop the file onto the Expander program or open the archive directly within the app. You can even just drag-and-drop your file onto Stuffit Expander's dock icon to quickly extract the file. If you're going to use it as your primary archive extractor you can also assign various different archive file formats to Stuffit Expander from within the program preferences. When other extractors just can't cope with that unusual archive type, Stuffit Expander steps in. From MIME, StuffitX and yEncode, to AppleSingle, ARC and .btoa files, Stuffit Expander can get you what you need and for that reason, regardless of whether you use the Unarchiver or its kin, it's an essential free Mac app. Stuffit Expander is available for free from the Mac App Store.
Music from the MPQs
Want to listen to the music of World of Warcraft without actually playing the game? It's possible -- anyee has posted a quick how-to over on the WoW Livejournal. The music is sitting on your computer in MPQ files, which are a proprietary Blizzard archiving format for their games. But there are a number of MPQ extractors and editors out there (the two recommended are MPQ Extractor for the Mac and MPQ Editor for Windows), so download one of those, use it to break open the MPQ you're looking for, and then find the music you want in that folder. Extract it out, and voila, you've got Warcraft music to listen to whenever you want.I know what you're saying -- this might be against the Terms of Service. But actually, it's not -- the ToS only mentions "modifying" game files, and since you're simply extracting them from their archives, you're not actually modifying them. Plus, Blizzard actually authorizes the extraction of this music for use in noncommercial machinima, so as long as you use this music and any other assets for personal, noncommercial use, Blizzard has no problem with it. Of course, you'll be stuck listening to the music in bits and pieces designed for looping rather than a snazzy CD set. But if all you want to do is taking a listen to some of the tunes out of game, there you go.
iPhone Backup Extractor helps kill bugs dead
iPhone developer Pádraig Kennedy sent us news of this jewel of a tool: iPhone Backup Extractor, a way to read the backups that iTunes automatically makes for your iPhone or iPod touch using the Finder. Kennedy already had a command-line tool to do this, but he wrapped an easy-to-use GUI around the whole process. Just select a backup, select an application, and away you go. What makes this useful, writes ADC award-winning iPhone developer Craig Hockenberry, is that it allows developers to track down customer bugs that they can't reproduce themselves. "You can instruct your customer to download the application, sync their device with iTunes and then have them select the latest backup and your application within that backup. ... Getting this information into your development environment is then just a matter of hacking around with the Simulator folder structure." "The bug won't stand a chance at this point." iPhone Backup Extractor is donationware, Leopard-only, and available directly from Kennedy's site (which has the best URL ever, incidentally).
Zapthrottle: The ramifications, rationalizations, and remunerations of mote extraction
Or"Someone's been breaking the first two rules of Mote Club."It can be said, quite accurately, that Engineering is not a merchant's craft. Many Engineers of all ratings bemoan the fact that their devices are not easily marketed. What we can make tends to require a rating in Engineering to operate, or it is bound to its maker on creation, or both. This tends to mean our prospective customers would, by necessity, likely be able to produce themselves what we might offer them for sale. To many an Engineer, this has been a burr in the cogs for years. To many other Engineers, however, it represents merely a challenge.There are ways and means to make money as an Engineer, though not so much as those high and mighty Enchanters, with their "75 gold for that one, plus mats" profession. One such way is through mote extraction, or the science of Motectomization. Due to a recent settlement with the Engineering Student's Association, that word will not be used again within this lecture. The mote extractor, especially as combined with other facets of our profession, can prove quite a reliable resource, and quite a profitable one at that. Herein we will discuss the ways of learning the Mote Extractor, and where to employ it for the most lucrative results.
