foobar2000 is a simple but powerful audio player featuring support for many popular and rare formats, either out of the box or by using additional components.

Developers can create foobar2000 components easily, by using the software development kit (SDK) available for download on the foobar2000 homepage.

Formats supported out of the box:
- MP1, MP2, MP3, MP4, MPC,
- AAC,
- Ogg Vorbis, FLAC / Ogg FLAC,
- WavPack, WAV,
- AIFF, AU, SND,
- CDDA

Formats supported by using optional downloadable components:
- Monkey’s Audio
- ALAC

After a long time in which development slowed to a halt, foobar2000 0.9 has been finally released, bringing forth various improvements for:
- User interface (GUI) – usability, responsiveness
- Format support, file handling and association
- New and rewritten components
- Security enhancements
- Better network code

For detailed information, see below for the full changelog info.

Unfortunately for Windows 95/98/ME/NT4 users, these operating systems are not supported anymore; foobar2000 requires at least Windows 2000 to run.

The version being currently worked on is foobar2000 0.9.2. The fourth beta has been recently released, fixing some bugs and adding native support for the Nero Digital AAC encoder.

*** WHAT’S NEW IN FOOBAR2000 0.9.2 BETA 4 ***

- Support for realtime DSP preset editing
- Native support for new free Nero Digital AAC encoder
- APL support (no longer maintained) moved to a separately downloadable component (Monkey’s Audio support)
- Added “directory context menus” feature to file type associations
- Various bug fixes

*** WHAT’S NEW IN FOOBAR2000 0.9.1 ***

- Faster Ogg Vorbis tag editing.
- Official ASIO support (downloadable separately).
- Improved compatibility with buggy soundcard drivers.
- Added DSP preset switching functionality.
- Workedaround buttons display problems on Windows 2000.
- Improved “random” button action with album/directory shuffle.
- Added WMA playback support.

*** WHAT’S NEW IN FOOBAR2000 0.9 ***

- Reworked UI structure, removed various redundant / rarely used features.
- New: Media Library, replacing old “database” functionality.
- Improved playlist management - better handling of multiple playlists, native multilevel undo and more.
- Changes in title formatting script (field remappings) to make common operations easier.
- New: Converter, replacing old “Diskwriter” component. Includes album image writing (cuesheet creation, direct encoding to MP4 with chapters), preview generation and multi-CPU optimizations. Most popular encoders are supported out-of-the-box; more encoders can be added using generic commandline encoder setup.
- Improved support for specific file formats: faster tag updates with MP3 and FLAC, new native ID3v2 support, rewritten MP4 support now including chapters, rewritten cuesheet handling with improved handling of embedded cuesheets, improved AAC streaming support, and more.
- Various speed optimizations, improved UI responsivity during time-consuming operations; better handling of overkill playlist scripts.
- New: file type associations page in preferences.
- New and improved ReplayGain scanner with proper multichannel support and multi-CPU optimizations; now with option to apply RG adjustment directly to audio data in MP3 files.
- Improved audio CD support, with simple secure ripping functionality.
- Rewritten network code.
- Improved security by replacing various third party libraries with own implementations.
- Various usability improvements.
- Dropped Windows 95/98/ME/NT4 OS support. Windows 2000, XP or newer is now required.

*** RELEVANT LINKS ***

Download foobar2000 0.9.2 Beta 4 (.exe - 1.44MB)
foobar2000 Homepage
foobar2000 Forums
Download foobar2000 optional components
foobar2000 Wiki

A new bugfix update has been released for Vandyke SecureCRT 5.1, the highly acclaimed security and remote administration suite.

SecureCRT 5.1.2, which includes GUI and command line tools for connecting to servers via SSH (v1 and v2), Telnet, Rlogin and other communication protocols, has been improved with fixes that affect terminal emulation (SCO ANSI), SFTP filename auto-completion and the user interface (GUI).

Please see below for more details.

*** WHAT’S NEW IN SECURECRT 5.1.2 ***

Bug fixes:

- Line drawing did not work correctly for SCO ANSI emulation.
- When the default session was edited and a tab other than the first tab was active, the “Apply change to all sessions?” prompt was displayed even if no changes were made.
- Under certain circumstances, the color change sequence for 256-color Xterm emulation was split between buffers, which caused some colors to be displayed incorrectly.
- SSH2: SecureCRT could crash when using the TAB key to complete a filename in an SFTP tab, especially if TAB was pressed multiple times.

*** RELEVANT LINKS ***

VanDyke Homepage
Download SecureCRT 5.1.2 (.exe - 8.91MB)
SecureCRT Product Page
General What’s New page for VanDyke products

WinRAR 3.60 Beta 4 has been posted on the Rarlab download site a few minutes ago.

The release brings forth speed improvements for archive recovery operations as well as some bug fixes related to the GUI (user interface) and a command line option.

See below for the full changelog information.

*** WHAT’S NEW IN WINRAR 3.60 BETA 4 ***

- Recovery speed improved when repairing heavily damaged archives using the recovery record.
- If volume size field contained a value exceeding 4 GB, it was changed to wrong value after switching to any other page of archiving dialog and returning back to “General” page.
- Update (’u') command did not work properly with some high ASCII names in beta 3.

*** RELEVANT LINKS ***

WinRAR Review
Download WinRAR 3.60 Beta 4 for Windows (.exe - 1MB)
Download RAR 3.60 Beta 4 for Mac OS X (.tar.gz - 357KB)
Download RAR 3.60 Beta 4 for Linux (.exe - 734KB)
Download WinRAR 3.60 Beta 4 for Pocket PC (.exe - 259KB)
Browse FTP Directory (other languages, themes, older releases)

The renonwned opensource compression utility for Windows, 7-Zip, reaches a new stable version - 4.42. Essentially a bug fix release, this version does not bring any notable additions since the last betas, but there are new features since the last stable version, 4.32. Check out below for full changelog information since 7-Zip 4.32 and download options.

There’s also a separate package that includes only the command line version of 7-Zip (see below for download links).

The LZMA SDK has been updated as well to version 4.42.

The Linux port of 7-Zip doesn’t seem to have been refreshed, the version available from the p7zip project is still 4.39.

*** WHAT’S NEW IN 7-ZIP 4.42 ***

- Compressing speed and Memory requirements were increased. Default dictionary size was increased: Fastest: 64 KB, Fast: 1 MB, Normal: 4 MB, Max: 16 MB, Ultra: 64 MB.
- 64-bit version now supports 1 GB dictionary
- 7z/LZMA now can use only these match finders: HC4, BT2, BT3, BT4
- Compression ratio in Zip/GZip/Deflate in Ultra mode was increased
- BZip2 compressing / decompressing now can work in multi-threading mode
- Multi-threading mode now is default for multi-processor systems
- New switch: -scs{WINDOSUTF-8} specifies charset for list files. Default charset for list files is UTF-8 now.
- New localization: Albanian
- New switch for 7z.exe (console version): -slt (”l” (list) command with -slt shows technical information for archive)
- 7-Zip now can unpack ISO archives
- 7-Zip File Manager now can calculate CRC checksums for files
- x switch with relative paths now affects files specified with absolute paths
- Optional Flat View mode in 7-Zip File Manager
- 7-Zip now can unpack some installers created by NSIS
- New localization: Kurdish
- Some bugs were fixed

*** RELEVANT LINKS ***

Full 7-Zip Review
Download 7-Zip 4.42 for Windows (.exe - 818KB)
Download 7-Zip 4.42 for Windows (MSI - 874KB)
Download 7-Zip 4.42 for Windows x64 (MSI - 1.23MB)
Download 7-Zip 4.42 for Windows ia64 (MSI - 1.86MB)
Download 7-Zip 4.42 for Windows Command Line Only (.zip - 302KB)
Download p7zip 4.39 for Linux x86 (2MB)

A new beta for 7-Zip, the renowned open source compression program has just been unleashed today.

7-Zip 4.41 Beta is basically a bugfix release, the changelog being extremely scarce in details about the specific bugs being actually fixed.

*** WHAT’S NEW IN 7-ZIP 4.41 BETA ***

Changes:

- Some bugs were fixed

*** RELEVANT LINKS ***

Full 7-Zip Review
Download 7-Zip Beta 4.41 for Windows (.exe - 818KB)
Download 7-Zip Beta 4.41 for Windows (MSI - 874KB)
Download 7-Zip Beta 4.41 for Windows x64 (MSI - 1.23MB)
Download p7zip 4.39 for Linux x86 (2MB)

WinRAR 3.60 has been posted on the Rarlab site disks a few minutes ago.

According to the changelog, this is a again a bugfix release with no new features, just as Beta 2. See below for yourself.

*** WHAT’S NEW IN WINRAR 3.60 BETA 3 ***

- Previous beta version could create duplicate copies of same file when updating an archived file with high ASCII characters in file name.
- SFX module crashed if single string length in “License” or “Text” block exceeded 4096 characters.

*** RELEVANT LINKS ***

WinRAR Review
Download WinRAR 3.60 Beta 3 for Windows (.exe - 1MB)
Download RAR 3.60 Beta 3 for Mac OS X (.tar.gz - 357KB)
Download RAR 3.60 Beta 3 for Linux (.exe - 734KB)
Download WinRAR 3.60 Beta 3 for Pocket PC (.exe - 259KB)
Browse FTP Directory (other languages, themes, older releases)

The excellent freeware PC cleaning utility, CCleaner (Crap Cleaner), has been updated today to version 1.29.295.

The new version’s improvements include fixes for Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) cookie cleaning, updates in the cleaning routines for several software products (Adobe Photoshop CS2, Nero, Ewido Anti-Malware) and new languages for the user interface.

See below for the full changelog information.

*** WHAT’s NEW IN CCLEANER (CRAP CLEANER) 1.29.295 ***

- Fixed IE 7.0 cookie cleaning.
- Updated Adobe Photoshop CS2 cleaning.
- Updated Ewido Anti-Malware cleaning.
- Updated Nero cleaning.
- Updated eTrust EZ Antivirus cleaning.
- Updated Hebrew Translation.
- Added Lithuanian Translation.
- Added Albanian Translation.
- Updated installer routines.
- Minor performance improvements.

*** RELEVANT/RELATED LINKS ***

Download CCleaner 1.29.295
CCleaner Homepage
CCleaner Quick Tour

May started with a new beta release for 7-Zip, the renowned open source compression program.

The highlight new feature of 7-Zip 4.40 Beta is support for unpacking (some) software installers created with Nullsoft’s NSIS setup creator. See below for full changelog information.

*** WHAT’S NEW IN 7-ZIP 4.40 BETA ***

Changes:
- 7-Zip now can unpack some installers created by NSIS
- New localization: Kurdish
- Some bugs were fixed

*** RELEVANT LINKS ***

Full 7-Zip Review
Download 7-Zip Beta 4.40 for Windows (.exe - 818KB)
Download 7-Zip Beta 4.40 for Windows (MSI - 874KB)
Download 7-Zip Beta 4.40 for Windows x64 (MSI - 1.23MB)
Download p7zip 4.39 for Linux x86 (2MB)