All of this would happen behind the sceens away from user interaction after the initial setup. This would require a ton of thought on how to make this work without become a nusiance to the user. The features used in Time Machine allow so many new possibilities it could take days of group brainstorming to fully develop and implemitation of this feature I’m envisioning

Some of the information about Time Machine is coming from this article: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/10/12/road_to_mac_os_x_leopard_time_machine.html

Place the “WireTap Studio Library” inside a folder of its own. Everything else that I have one level down inside that Documents folder is in a containing folder. I say this not for my own consistency and organization purposes but to set up the possibility of providing multiple libraries like iTunes or iPhoto offers. Maybe even giving the option of putting a password on a library since these master lossless recordings will be sitting there permanently.

Another thought I had was to allow for a third or even a fourth track – certainly useful for Skype/Gizmo recordings along with one or maybe even two line-ins … and then maybe even adding a Finder track or even an iTunes track to go along with those interviews or whatever. 3 or 4 should do it anyway. Then animate the controller drawer for each track added – having it slide down a bit more automatically to keep one open track selector available for selection all the time – until you hit the track limit; thereby keeping the controller size at its absolute minimum.

In reference to the controller, if you could cram another button into the small space (or maybe give us a menu item and keystroke instead, because I like the design of the controller as it is) to give us the ability to temporarily switch the controller to a wide mode or something so that we could view, in its entirety, the scrolling animation that has the format specifications… and then also stretch out the track selectors down below in the controlelr so that they can hold the full application names of some of those longer titles. Yeah, we could switch back and forth between condensed and extended with the press of a key command.

Well, these are my ideas anyway. In the grand scheme of things they’re not very necessary. They would simply act as a nice little addition to an already great program. A program I would probably buy anyway if I didn’t win it here. Hope I do win it though.

Oh, one more idea! In thinking forward to Leopard’s Back To My Mac feature, is it possible to make it compatible with it. Maybe this is something that is already possible but it might be nice to be able to access the library across computers like this. I suppose you could tie the first feature request I mentioned into this. You know, maybe press the option key on start-up or something to get a dialog to pick a library, then navigate the network (IP address) and then to the Documents folder holding the Wire Tap Studio folder with the libraries and choose the library that you may need access to. Maybe its on the office computer and I’m working from home.

OK. I’m done brainstorming for my new favorite app.
Many things to like here in this new Ambrosia product, that’s for sure.

http://jackosx.com/

-Blake

Obviously, having not played with it firsthand it’s hard to see if these features are already integrated, but some useful features I could envisage are:

– being able to change/remove the length of the automatic fade in/out easily (in real time or by default)

– save directly to an FTP server

– integration with the update methods of various blog & wiki modules (or maybe just a browser plugin that gives you direct access to the “Library” from your browser?)

In my opinion Wiretap Studio is great, amazing and simply beatiful but 69 bucks are very expensive for an app that I only use sometimes…..

As far as I am concerned I would buy it for the half price but not for almost 70$!!!

So I hope to win this very, very amazing app

A simple workaround for this issue would be for you to pick my name in the drawing.

Another possible way limit free use might be a limited time function as is the trial for OmniWeb. Omni counts days of actual use rather than calendar days elapsed since first use. That way if the new user tests OW one day and puts it aside for six months, when he returns the rest of the test period has not expired.

I do pay for what I use, as you will notice in your database of shareware purchases.

2. The ability of the installer to remove all pieces of earlier versions of this and related programs such as Wiretap Pro.

Sorry, couldn’t help it. Andy’s name will be forever linked, in my mind, with the wonderful Black Box he did back when I was in the university. Not only was it a beautiful hack but, in some unexplainable way, allowed to bypass license restrictions in the network and launch Applications in network servers that were in use by other people (something truly important for the student on a deadline).

“But isn’t that the point of a podcast?”

Well, a lot of sites (particularly big companies) only offer their stuff as an RSS feed with no enclosures where you have to click through to the webpage and listen to it in your browser with some crazy flash or realmedia player that you would need to download manually and convert before you could play it in iPod/iTunes.

What would be cool is the ability for the application to look at new entries in an rss feed, and scan the page linked from the feed for any sort of audio file, and immediately begin to record that. This way, you’d have an automated system of recording things that need to be recorded/converted on a regular basis.

As for features for WireTap Studio….
* run automator or applescript after scheduled recording is completed
* stream over wifi connection to iphone or ipod touch.
* include the ability to add notes or annotate the recording.

To be perfectly honest it looks like Ambrosia have already got most of, if not all, of my needs covered already. As long as normalization is pretty straightforward and removing pops and hiss is not too painful then i’d say they were on to another winner.