by , 9:30 AM EDT, June 25th, 2007

File Juicer 4.8 ($12.95 Shareware)
Echo One

One of the features that makes Mac OS X so usable, considering the underlying UNIX foundation, is the Finder interface. The Finder takes the thousands of files on your hard drive, and present them in a way that allows you to do all sorts of cool things with your Mac. Normally, a user doesn't care about the hundreds or thousands of files hidden inside a single package. However, there are times where one wants to dig beneath the surface and get at all the goodies contained within some of these files. Fortunately, there's File Juicer...

Veteran Observers will know that one can get at many of the contents of an application file by performing a Control-Click and selecting "Show Package Contents." Alas, this only works for application files. For other types of files, File Juicer is your friend. Just take any file, drag it on top of File Juicer, and it will try to extract as much information from the source file as possible. The extracted files are neatly organized in subfolders for each extracted file type, gif, jpg, png and so on. File Juicer knows about over 200 source file types, so if you need to extract data from a file, File Juicer probably knows about it.

File Juicer Extracting Safari Files

While being able to extract information from a specific file is cool, File Juicer can also peek into several nooks and crannies where interesting information may be stored. Some of these areas are directories which store information for your Internet browser cache, Dashboard, iPhoto, iWeb, iChat and Temporary items. But there's more! File Juicer can also recover images and video from erased flash memory cards. For those who enjoy using Automator, you can even create a File Juicer Automator Action that you can access from a handy Finder (control-click) contextual menu.

So extract the most from your files, and give File Juicer a try today. Have any other Gadgets you think are worthy? Send an email to John and he'll give it a spin.