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Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Web services, web 2.0, Web

Wobzip extracts archive files before you download


Upon first reading about Wobzip, I wasn't convinced about the usefulness of a web-based tool to decompress archive files. With my back-breakingly slow 30k/s upload cap, anything over a few megs would be brutal to even submit for processing. In that case, a desktop app like 7zip or Winrar makes infinitely more sense.

What I did find handy about the service is its ability to extract files from a URL. Anyone that has to download driver files from a hardware manufacturer can benefit from this: instead of needing to download a 200mb file just for one or two megs of files for your OS, fire the URL into Wobzip and download only what you need. As an added bonus, Wobzip also scans the extracted files for viruses.

Success with unzipping from a URL produced mixed results: http worked every time, but ftp was hit-or-miss. A number of sites that I'd like to be able to use Wobzip on only provide ftp downloads, so I'd like to see that addressed.

Shortcomings aside, Wobzip is a handy site to add to your bookmarks - even if you're only going to use it once in a blue moon.

Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Browser Tips

Preview the contents of ZIP files before downloading with Archview for Firefox

Archview

Don't want to download a massive ZIP or RAR file just so you can extract one tiny file contained in the archive? ArchView is a Firefox add-on that will let you preview the contents of ZIP and RAR files posted online before you download them. And you can even download individual files from within the archive.

Archview hangs out in your status bar where you can click on it to enable or disable the plugin or change its settings. Future versions will add support for additional archive formats including ISO and 7z. Archview supports Firefox 2 and Firefox 3, but the version available at the official Firefox add-ons page claims that it isn't compatible with Firefox 3 beta 5 r Firefox 3 RC1. This isn't true, but you'll have to install the plugin from the developer's page if you're using anything newer than Firefox 3 beta 4.

[via gHacks]

Filed under: Utilities, Video, Windows, Freeware

Play video files from incomplete RAR archives with Dziobas RAR Player

Dziobas RAR Player is a media player with a couple of nice features, but one that stands out in particular: the ability to play an incomplete RAR file.

With videos that have been compressed as RAR files, you usually have to wait until the entire archive is downloaded before you can uncompress the file for playback. With Dziobas RAR player, you can view any portion of the RAR file you've downloaded without having to wait for the rest. This can be helpful in a few ways:
  • You can make sure that the RAR file is actually what it claims to be
  • You can make sure that you have the proper codecs on your system to playback the file
  • You can watch the video while the rest downloads; if you time it right, you can watch the RAR file all the way through without ever having to uncompress it.
To open an incomplete RAR file for playback in Dziobas RAR player, go to File, Streaming from Unrar, and locate the RAR file. That's all there is to it. The only limitation we could find was the inability to fast forward and rewind the movie while it was still downloading.

Dziobas RAR player also supports subtitles, has a thumbnail generator, and more. The free program is Windows only.

[via Sizlopedia]

TUGzip: Decompress anything

TUGZip Screenshot
Have no idea what an ACE file is? Got a few ISO files laying around but you have no idea what they are? Well peek inside using Freeware archival utility TUGZip. TUGZip opens every archive format you could possibly care about, and several more, you probably don't.
  • Archive formats - ZIP, 7-ZIP, A, ACE, ARC, ARJ, BH, BZ2, CAB, CPIO, DEB, GCA, GZ, IMP, JAR, LHA (LZH), LIB, RAR, RPM, SQX, TAR, TGZ, TBZ, TAZ, YZ1
  • Disc image formats - BIN, C2D, IMG, ISO and Nero's NRG
TUGZip can also create archives in most of these formats, Including self extracting archives. All the wile using a 3 pane explorer interface (or you can change it via options to a more standard one or two pane. TUGzip also includes an explorer context addon, so you can compress files into your favorite archive, without even having to open the program. All of this, and blazing fast too.

[ via Ghacks ]

Filed under: Web services

RAR Host: Free hosting just for RAR files

RAR HostRAR files seem like an odd niche to target for a file upload and hosting service, but that's just what RAR Host does. RAR, of course, is a popular popular format for archiving and compressing files, and in order to upload files to RAR Host you'll need to archive them with a program like WinRAR. Once you've got a RAR file to upload, RAR Host offers some nice features, including allowing up to 200MB uploads, listing files inside archives before you download them, advanced password support, and keeping files until nobody has downloaded them for two months. RAR Host was pretty slick when I tried it, with a slick Web 2.0 look and a nice upload progress bar. Look after the jump for a few screenshots of it in action.

Read more →

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So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

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