Today we’re proud to announce that Uncle Hextor 1.0 is now available for download and purchase. Uncle Hextor is a new kind of hex editor — a reverse engineering hex editor — which was designed specifically for the type of work we do here at Weird Kid Software when we’re reverse engineering the various email storage formats supported by Emailchemy.

Uncle Hextor was developed by Wave Orbital LLC, in partnership with Weird Kid Software LLC, so you’ll see it for sale on both of our web sites (so don’t be alarmed).

It all started with a conversation I had with an old friend about software I needed but didn’t have time to write. I described a new kind of hex editor where I could highlight ranges of bytes and “tag” them as I work with a new file format, rather than working across several different apps (a standard hex editor, an XML editor, a data modeler, and even a pen-and-paper notebook). I really needed a better visual of the structures I’m uncovering as I work with the hex data. Then, the real killer feature would be the ability to dump the visual representation to an XML-Schema as a formal specification.

My friend Patrick from Wave Orbital, without hesitation, said he could build it and the rest is history.

Uncle Hextor isn’t done yet though. Yes, it’s a complete product per the basic specs we laid out that night over a beer, but just wait to see what else Wave Orbital has planned for it. As a programmer, this product and its potential really excites me.

Download the demo and give it a try.

Oh, the name? I don’t remember exactly, but I do remember that it had something to do with Uncle Fester from The Addams Family.