Though still labeled as “Beta”, the basic functionality of OpenHuddle is already up and running at full steam, and users are starting to filter in to take a peek at what they’ve got going on. OpenHuddle’s homepage will explain the basics: the entire system functions through multi-functional web application areas called “Rooms” (or “Huddles”), which you can customize and create yourself.

Need a place where you can chat with twelve of your friends while doodling on a whiteboard to really illustrate (my trackpad art skills notwithstanding) your point? Not a problem, just add a whiteboard and chat widget to your Room’s layout space and you’re good to go. If you’re into more direct communication, OpenHuddle also has a fairly robust “Multi-User Video Conferencing” interface which does pretty much what you’d expect it to, except that, because it’s entirely web-based, it’s completely cross-platform compatible so you don’t have to worry about who’s on what. There’s also an audio-only chat option for Skype-like calls, and an instant-message-style text chat widget.

File sharing and collaboration is a necessary feature of these applications, and OpenHuddle acknowledges this by providing extensive file-type support for users. Need to get some comments on a presentation before you go up to perform? Upload your PowerPoint (.PPT) or Flash (.SWF) slideshow file and you’re ready to get comments from everyone in your room in seconds. Ditto for documents, photos, live web clips, and even your desktop! Need to teach someone exactly how to install something or perform certain actions in an application? Why tell them when you can show them with the equivalent of a screencast –- right inside their browser.

That’s all great in theory, of course, but how does it all actually work out in the real world? Well, it turns out that it performs quite speedily considering everything that’s going on within a single browser instance. The video chat was a little choppy in my experience (using the Macbook Pro’s built-in iSight camera and mic), and the text chat had some occasional delays in publishing a message, but not enough to be considered anything but an annoyance. The interface is indeed very customizable, though it may not be immediately clear how it works. The file and desktop sharing worked as advertised and, on a Mac, you’ll be asked to download a small Java applet which will allow you to specify whether you want to share your entire screen or just a section of it, which is actually very smart.

All of this functionality begs the question of how secure the whole enterprise is, and the answer is “not very”. The system seems more tailored to casual, friendly kinds of conversations between friends or family; it’s far too open and publicly-accessible to be of much use for business users hoping for a private meeting room, even though you can apply some basic access restrictions to your Room.

All in all, OpenHuddle has taken an important pioneering step for the web applications industry and it proves that this kind of cross-platform collaboration is indeed possible. Once they come out of beta and work out a few kinks in the system, I think that there will be a large market waiting for them. Head on over to OpenHuddle.com to check it out for yourself, and let us know how you think the service is coming along!

The first thing you will notice about Screencast is that it has a simple, yet elegant, interface. There are only three sections: Screen, Audio and Keyboard & Mouse. This is much different from some other Screencasting apps because it is so simple. Some people might also call this a weakness because it doesn’t have all the features of some Screencasting apps, but for most people you don’t need all those features. Screenflick also has a few preferences, too.

The Screen pane is very simple; there are only a few options. You can have either a fixed recording zone or a set size that follows the mouse. If you choose the first one, when you start to record it will ask you for the area that you want to record. If you choose the latter one, you don’t need to set a size. The “Show Camera Bounds” option is great if you want to see what is being recorded so you can make sure that you are capturing everything that you want. You can also choose the capture rate. The higher the number, the bigger the size and quality. The lower the number, the smaller the size and quality. It is nice for a Screencasting app to have only a few options for the screen recording so you don’t have to configure like a million things. But this can also be a problem; some people want more options, like zooming or window highlighting. Screencast gives you the basic features that you need.

The Audio pane also has only a few options. You can choose to record system audio and record microphone audio. For recording microphone audio, it lets you choose the input you want to use. I cannot think of any other audio features that you would need, so the feature-set for audio is perfect. Not too many features, not too few — it gives you all you need.

The Keyboard & Mouse pane gives you a lot of options. You can choose to show or hide the mouse, show mouse clicks and show keyboard shortcuts. You can customize the length and color of the mouse clicks, but there are more options for showing shortcuts. Again, you can choose the duration and background, but you can also choose font size, position and what shortcuts not to show. When you are recording, after you have done the shortcut, it displays it on the screen; it would be nice if it showed them as you typed them in, but then there couldn’t be exceptions. It would also be cool to show text that is typed in, but that is not needed.

The Preference pane just has a few options for pre-recording setup and the menu-bar. You can show the size or the length of the recording. If you want a recording to be a certain size, this really helps, because it is right in the menu bar. But, if you are recording the whole screen, you probably don’t want your viewers to see this, so you can just turn it off.

After you have recorded a Screencast with Screenflick, you get the normal compression options for any Screencasting tool. You can choose an audio compressor and a video compressor and the dimensions. These are all the compression options needed to compress a Screencast.

Screenflick, by the Araelium Group, may not have all the features of some other tools, but it is a lot cheaper at only $29! Compare that to Screenflow, which is $99. I think Screenflick is more than worth the $29, even with only simple options. If you are looking for a simple-to-use Screencasting tool, Screenflick is perfect, because it has all that yo need to record a great Screencast, but it doesn’t have so many features that you can’t figure out how to do anything.

However, not everyone is so lucky, which is probably why iTunes controller applications are so popular and plentiful.

An iTunes controller is a companion to Apple’s jukebox that allows you to play, pause, skip between tracks and adjust volume using either keyboard shortcuts or buttons in the menu bar. As more people listen to music while surfing the web, with a recent survey by Olswang finding about one in five computer users listen to music on their computers daily, there’s a big market for these apps.

Application launchers like QuickSilver (free), Butler (free), LaunchBar ($19.95) and ClawMenu ($19.95) offer basic iTunes controls via customizable keyboard shortcuts. Firefox users also have the option of installing the FoxyTunes extension, which places a bar along the bottom of the browser with buttons to control iTunes.

There are a ton of options in the realm of dedicated iTunes controllers. I’ll start by breaking down the freeware options (because everybody loves free). But for a small price tag, you can find some really solid apps that can be worth the purchase if you use iTunes as often as I do. More advanced features can include support for system-wide Growl notifications, album art fetching and syncing with Last.fm, so if you can’t live without these extras, you might want to skip to the end of the list.

Free Controllers

Bytecontroller – This is a fairly no-frills menu bar controller. When opened, it places a set of three small buttons for advancing the track, select the previous track and play/pause, with a list of decent skins to choose from. It also supports keyboard shortcuts and Growl notifications, but it’s a basic controller that does what it sets out to do.

GimmeSomeTune – With hotkeys, album art and lyric fetching, remote control support and Last.fm syncing, GimmeSomeTune has more features than most of its peers. If it weren’t for the optional, hideous menu bar buttons and the lack of Growl support (it uses an oversized, cluttered bezel notification window instead), this would really stand out as one of the best controllers out there.

iController – The controller is very simple and optionally scrolls information about the currently playing song in the menu bar. It’s got hotkeys and its own notification system, which automatically switches to Growl if you have it installed. Sure, iController hasn’t been updated in more than a year, but if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

iMote – Hotkeys, Growl notifications and a menu bar with iTunes controls make this a useful app. And for those of you who still haven’t installed Growl, it has its own floater — no additional software necessary. iMote also has a feature called StepBack, which lets you specify an amount of time for the app to rewind when playing a song that was paused. It doesn’t seem very useful for music listening, but for podcasts, I can see it really coming in handy.

Maestro – Especially handy if you use a lot of playlists, Maestro is a compact app featuring controller buttons and a small list with available playlists and the songs within those lists. But it doesn’t provide much advantage over iTunes’ own mini controller, so unless you switch between playlists a lot, it’s hard to recommend Maestro.

Menuet – Standing as one of the strongest free options, Menuet places a small image of the currently playing song’s album art in the menu bar. You can click on it to get a larger version of the artwork as well as next, previous and play/pause buttons. It’s got Last.fm scrobbling, Growl notifications, keyboard shortcuts, controller skins and a sleep timer for stopping iTunes after a period of time. It even comes packaged with Art Collector, a nifty app for retrieving album artwork. Previously freeware, Menuet has since become charityware, meaning if you use and like the app, the developer encourages you to donate to a charity.

Play MiTunes – It has a nice little controller window interface, but it’s main attraction is the “type-and-play” feature, where you can type the first few letters of a song and play it. Unfortunately you need to specify whether your search applies to artist or song, so it makes the search feature somewhat less useful than opening iTunes.

QuickTunes – It’s certainly not the most attractive app, but it’s got some useful features. It can do hotkeys and places the name of the currently playing song in the menu bar, with additional controls when clicking in the menu bar. Some great options it offers is to play another song by the currently playing artist, play another from the same CD or play another from the same genre. Of course the pastel controller is hideous, but if you don’t care about aesthetics (but you probably do if you’re a Mac user) give this one a shot.

Radion – According to its developer, Radion was the best of its kind when it released. With a skinnable control window, artwork downloading and hotkeys, it has plenty of nice features. But the app hasn’t been updated in quite a while, although developer Ninja Kitten promises version 2 is in the works. In order to use the app, you’ll need to punch in the following details into the registration: Name – Ninja kitten / Email: kitty@ninjakitten.us / Serial: RADION-XkUmXF-WeDEE-hFCwY-kwEHz-wazc

Sizzling Keys ($5 for Pro version) – If you’re all about the keyboard, Sizzling Keys is a great option. It doesn’t offer a menu bar or window controller — it’s all done via customizable hotkeys in System Preferences. It even lets you add shortcuts for some actions unrelated to iTunes, like accessing the login screen. It also has a bezel notification feature and a search and play popup. My only complaint is that I keep running into a bug with the search, where I have to restart the app for it to recognize my keystrokes.

You Control: iTunes – You Control places the control and rating buttons right in the menu bar, with access to recent tracks and a ton of other information right within the contextual menu. It also has hotkeys and a notification bezel. I found You Control eating up quite a bit of memory in my use, but you might want to give it a shot to see how it runs on your system. You’ll need to register for free at the You Software web site to get a license.

Not Free Controllers

Barquee ($10) – Elegant and customizable are what defines Barquee. With a combination menu bar controller/song info marquee, which can be command-clicked to access the song’s progress bar, Barquee is a nice option whether you plan to use the menu bar controls or hotkeys. It’s also skinnable.

CoverSutra (14.95€) - As the most expensive app on the list, it’s ironic that CoverSutra happens to be one of the best. Complete with sexy pop-up alerts, Growl and Last.fm support, and a really nifty menu bar music search feature, this one is really hard to resist. One unique feature is a CD case that can be dragged around the desktop, showing the currently playing song in iTunes. With all the other options, it’s hard to justify the price tag, which works out to about $22 at the current exchange rate, but it really is a full package.

Synergy Classic (5€) – Synergy has long been one of the most popular iTunes companions. Recently the app has been completely rewritten for the Leopard version, which brought with it a number of random bugs. It offers all the basic features you would expect from a shareware controller, hotkeys, floaters and menu bar controls, but not really much “wow.” Fortunately Synergy is one of the less expensive shareware options.

TuneBar ($12) – This is probably the most attractive controller on the list. Sure, it has Growl support, hotkeys and playlist access, but it’s the interface that makes it truly shine. Everything is skinnable, from the floating controller to the incredibly well executed library search popup. TuneBar borrows one excellent feature from WinAmp — a thin controller, called SlimBar, that sits just below the menu bar, providing all the basic iTunes controls including a track timeline and search.

TuneHound ($9.95) – Put simply, TuneHound is bad. With an ugly controller window, lack of full hotkey support and an unintuitive rating system, TuneHound is a worse option than most of the freeware apps on the list. The only thing it really has going for it is the ability to edit track information from within the small TuneHound interface.

I personally attend many presentations at work where someone is at the back of the room with a video camera running to capture the presenter, his/her presentation on the overhead and the delivery that goes with it.

While this adds immense value for reuse of the presentation, the quality is often poor, and in many cases, the presentation itself is illegible. ProfCast, from Humble Daisy, is a great application for capturing live presentation content and audio in a format that can be easily published and distributed via a number of open channels.
ProfCast is able to record either PowerPoint or Keynote presentations in-time with the presenters audio.

With each new recording, a project document is created storing the raw material for future editing. Recordings can be shared by publishing as a Quicktime (.mov) movie or exporting to GarageBand or iWeb. The GarageBand export supports either enhanced .m4a audio or .m4b audio book formats. Through the use of ID3 Tags, it’s possible to include additional descriptive metadata information which is particularly useful when publishing content to iTunes U.

Podcasts are managed within a central repository called The Podcast Manager. Recordings are managed as a podcast series with associated episodes which can be edited and published. Additionally, screenshots, embedded links and other media not created by ProfCast can be included in the published podcast. The Podcast Manager will generate and publish well formed RSS feed files as well as publish the recording to an FTP, .Mac WebDav or local location.

With the mid-January update, Profcast 2.2 is now fully compatible with 10.5 Leopard as well as iLife 08 and iWork 08. ProfCast, distributed as shareware, is available for a 15 day free trial evaluation after which registration costs $59.95. Education pricing is available with volume discounts. If you’re the poor guy standing at the back of the room working the camcorder, why not give ProfCast a try and recommend it to your next set of presenters?

It will make your life a lot easier. Future viewers will thank you.

Video capturing applications have always been few and far between, because video is so much more complicated to deal with than still pictures. However, iShowU is able to overcome this difficulty, and provides a seamless experience for the user.

iShowU is a powerful app with a simple interface. It’s single-window gives you a variety of options that let you choose the video format that is best for what you want. Want a HD video to be burned on a DVD? Want a small file, with highly compressed video, but good voice quality? Want a video with very high frame rate, and no audio? iShowU can give you that with just a click of a button. It comes populated with a variety of video formats for you to choose from. And unlike other applications, iShowU does not give you complex compression types. Instead, it surpasses the actual compression, and focuses on what the user wants. If you want a small video for the web, click the preset “Small, High Quality, Small file”. It’s really that easy.

Recording a video is as easy as clicking the Record button after clicking a preset. The video begins to record, and is noticeable by a red light in the menu bar. However, the best thing about this application comes when you are finished the video. When you click the Stop Recording button, the video immediately shows up on your desktop. You don’t need to wait for compressing or encoding. You are done. This saves a lot of time, and allows the application to be used more experimentally, knowing that there won’t be a long wait rendering.

Once you start to use more of the advanced features in iShowU, you can modify the current pre-sets, or make your own. iShowU allows you to choose whether you want to record the microphone or the system audio. It lets you choose the quality of the audio, and gives you an audio level indicator so you can see how well your microphone is working.

iShowU offers a bunch of video options, and makes it so easy that really anyone jump right in. The quality options are on a slider, that make it easy for anyone to choose how much quality they want or need. And if you don’t know which compression type or quality type to choose from, you can experiment with different mini-videos. There is nothing to risk, because you don’t have the long render time at the end. Finally, iShowU even allows you to add a countdown before your video recording, which allows you to have all of your windows ready before the recording starts.

There is one feature in iShowU that is executed perfectly. Many video recording apps will give you a spot to enter your capture size, or the size of the video you are recording. You will have to enter a predetermined size such as ‘640 x 480′. iShowU offers this option for advanced users, but also provides a much easier solution. By clicking the Edit Recording Size button, iShowU will dim your entire screen, except for the area that will be recorded. You can easily drag the corners of this window bigger or smaller to increase or decrease the recording area. You can also hit Cmd-1 through Cmd-4 to use their helpful presets, which are in determined by the size of your screen.

iShowU is a unique application that acheives something very complex flawlessly. With the easy, understandable presets, no render times, and ability to edit recording size fast and easily, iShowU stands out as an application that was thought out from a user interface perspective. At the same time, iShowU is not a watered down version of screen recording software. It also includes high-end and professional options that are easy to grasp and understand, yet very powerful. For $20, you can’t go wrong with iShowU, and you will end up with a very professional result.

Shinywhitebox, the makers of iShowU, have offered to give away one license of iShowU randomly to one lucky MacApper reader. To enter the contest simply comment, and describe one feature that you’d like to see added in a future version of iShowU.

Be sure to subscribe to MacApper to not miss any of our regular giveaways!

Like so many other areas, screencasting is dominated by one or two apps (namely, iShowU and SnapZPro). I was therefore thrilled to see an announcement by the Araelium Group saying that they had developed an application to compete in this growing market.

My first impressions were not great. The interface is far from spectacular, especially compared to iShowU, and there are some bizarre design choices. For example, the main window is a floating one. So whenever I want to set up a screencast I cannot do anything else without the window being in the way.

So say I get an email. I have to close the window to read it, and then open it back up again when I’m done. This may not sound like much, but it gets really irritating after a while. Other things like whenever I press the shortcut combination (I don’t know whether this will happen for everybody) to bring up the window, I get the system’s default beep. Again, very irritating. Also the animations within the interface seemed a little slow, but your mileage may vary.

All gripes aside, the options that lie within the interface make the program very flexible. You can choose whether or not Screencast has a dock icon, a menu bar icon or neither; You can have the camera follow the mouse or be at a fixed location; select the camera’s size; choose to record audio or not, and from what source.

All very handy, but if you are an iShowU user (I cannot vouch for SnapZ pro as I have never used it) this is all pretty standard. A great unique feature is Screencast’s ability to display shortcut keys and mouse clicks, saving time in post production. Again, nice but not a huge incentive to switch to using this if you are happy with something else, especially as Screencast is $9 more than iShowU.

So after all of this would I recommend you switch? Yes I would. Why? Performance and quality.

The movies that I created using Screencast outshone iShowU by a long, long margin, and for one primary reason: smooth resizing. All this time I have been using iShowU and, although I had set it to a high frame-rate, I never got that smooth, clear picture that I was looking for. If you watch ScreenCastsOnline, or a screencast that you have created using iShowU, and look closely you will notice that the mouse is never quite as it appears on your screen, or that resize doesn’t look as slick, but instead more jerky.

Screencast eliminates these issues completely. Every movie I have taken with it looked exactly as it had on my screen before hand. So for this reason I am going to have to recommend you take a look at Screencast, if you can live with its clunky aspects, the end product will blow you away.

Screencast is $29 shareware and available on the Araelium website.

So what’s new? Well, quite a lot really. There are some special features; however, they are installed alongside some tools to make it an extremely easy server to setup.

Apple is calling it ‘The World’s Easiest Server‘ and claiming that no IT department is required. This could be a huge selling point, as most day to day tasks can be done from within one window: Server Preferences. Just like System Preferences in Desktop OS X, you can change users, setup and configure services available on the network, as well as see different information about what the server is doing.

Also new, is iCal Server. This is a new server that allows iCal events to be shared across a network. Although this will work best with iCal, it uses CalDAV, which is an open standard. This is a great feature for any business, as it allows information on “who is where at when” to be shared, allowing easier scheduling of meetings.

There are also some more niche services which come with Leopard Server; these are Wiki Server, and Podcast Producer. These tools will be very useful, especially with collaborative editing with the Wiki Server; however they are likely to have a smaller user base.

A big new feature is Spotlight Server. This makes it easy to find files anywhere on a network. While it may sound like a bit of a security risk, users can only see files which they have permission to see. This is a good new feature, however time will tell as to just how fast it can really perform.

Those are the main new features for OS X 10.5 Server Edition. It seems like a great upgrade, that could bring it into the mainstream; especially when price is considered. OS X Server costs $499 for 10 clients, and $999 for unlimited clients. This is actually a great deal, as Windows Server 2003 is $999 for just 5 clients.

The system requirements are the same as Leopard Desktop Edition, with an 867Mhz G4 or better required, plus 1GB of RAM. However, 20GB of Disk Space is required. Leopard Server is available now, from the online Apple store, or your local brick-and-mortar store. Check out all the features.

First off, thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to do this interview with us.

No problem, glad to be here!

Can you remember the first audio app that Ambrosia developed?

That depends on what you mean by audio app. I guess you could say Snapz Pro, because it could record system audio along with video as part of a recording. Very useful for doing video game trailers, and the like.

And from there you decided to have an app dedicated solely to sound with WireTap right?

Actually, the way it happened is we needed to work on the Mac OS X native version of Snapz Pro X. For that, we needed the ability to record system audio again, and because it was an entirely new operating system, we had to totally rewrite the way we captured system audio. So in order to test this audio capture engine properly, we wrote a little free application called WireTap which used our audio capture engine, and released it to the world.

We never intended it to be a product, but rather just as a cool free tool for people to record audio with, and a way for us to get our audio capture engine tested properly. It was only after the overwhelming response that we realized we might want to take this a bit more seriously, and make a product out of it! The original WireTap was pretty limited; we came out with the $19 WireTap Pro later on that offered more robust recording capabilities, file formats, etc.

And in less than a week you will be releasing you latest audio app WireTap Studio, can you tell us what kind of improvements you have made since WireTap Pro?

Here’s how we approached the product. I spent a month talking to people who record audio. What I found was that people fell into two categories:

1) They used ridiculously low end solutions like QuickTime Pro to record directly to mp3. If anything was wrong, too bad. They didn’t edit anything.

or


2) They used ridiculously high end solutions, like Peak. But they only used a very small subset of the features the product offered, and in general, were frustrated by the difficulty of using the product.


So we went for the sweet spot in the middle. Every feature we have in there is a result of talking to people. LivePreview, for instance. We asked podcasters, people who ripped CDs, etc. what format/compression settings they recorded to. Most didn’t know, or if they did know, didn’t know why they chose that format. So we tried to figure out a way to let them intelligently decide what format and compression settings they might want to use, and how large it would be before they even recorded anything. That’s how LivePreview was born. We tried to work backwards in terms of the way the product works, not just make yet another sound recorder.

With LivePreview (which is patent pending technology), you can be listening to audio coming form any source, then you can change the compression settings on the fly, and instantly hear the difference in the compression level, and see the difference in terms of how large the audio will be. I think it’s a really groundbreaking feature, because when you can compare audio side by side, you can really tell the difference between different compression formats, and figure out what recording settings you want for your audio.

This is just one example of many that I can give you. Everything was designed by looking at what people did with audio, and figuring out how we could best solve that problem. We wanted to do the hard work for the end user.

WireTap Studio’s editor is well designed and one of the easiest editors I’ve used next to the new iMovie editor, did you create this simplistic interface from feedback?

What we tried to do with the editor is make something that did 90% of what people do with recorded audio extremely well. We’re not competing with Peak or other high end audio products. Again through interviewing people, we determined what things people did with their audio. We then set out to make an audio editor that was really, really good at the things these people did most of the time. Here’s a really good example I think. Just about every audio recording product on the market makes you tell it what file format, compression level, etc. That you want before you record anything.

To me, this is backwards! It’d be like Photoshop making you choose the file format and compression level before you can draw a single brush stroke. So we thought about it from the average user’s point of view. If they choose a higher bitrate for their audio, they expect it to sound better. They don’t know anything about re-compression issues, etc. They just know they want it to sound better. So WireTap Studio records a losslessly compressed master recording that all of the edits you make work from. This allows you to choose a high quality recording even after you’ve recorded it. You can even take something you recorded as “mono” and get stereo out of it, just by clicking on a popup menu.

Let’s say someone recorded something in a format that sounds bad. They either throw out their hour-long recording/interview and redo it, or they ship it sounding bad. With WireTap Studio, they can just change the quality level, and boom! There it is, it sounds better. This is one of the many ways that we tried to re-think the concept of recording and editing audio. This all takes place transparently to the user.

Most audio apps let you record and edit, but WireTap Studio lets you store your audio in a library, just in case you decided to re-edit your recording. What made you decide to add a library to the program?

We approached the product from the point of view that we wanted to solve four problems for people who recorded audio. The bullet points we came up with were:

• Record.
• Organize.
• Edit.
• Export.


We wanted WireTap Studio to be really good at those 4 basic things. The reason we went with a recording library was to let people easily manage their recordings. No need to dig around on their computer to see where a particular recording is, it’s always there in a nice iTunes-like Library. This has the added convenience of being able to search/sort on whatever you like, file name, size, date, even mp3 tags. The Library also allows us to do some smart things behind the scenes. As I mentioned, we have a lossless original master recording, but we actually do a dual encode when we record. We record in the format people say they want, and then also record the lossless master recording. If you make changes to the recording, by say, cropping it a bit, or changing the format, we re-encode the file behind the scenes so it is always instantly available for exporting/uploading/whatever. The Library allows us to present a single file to the user, and do some fantastic magic “behind the curtain” to make their life easier.

Another new feature to WireTap Studio is recording sessions, which lets you time-shift the recording of your audio. Will you ever bring this feature in to Snapz Pro for time-shift recording of your video?

The Recording Sessions feature of WireTap Studio essentially lets you encapsulate everything about a recording into a neat little package. The file format, compression settings, audio source, etc. And have it start and stop on a schedule. This is fantastic for doing things like recording internet radio shows when you’re not around. You can launch any media player from WireTap Studio automatically, have it start the feed, and WireTap Studio will record it for you. It’ll even wake your computer up from sleep to do it!

As for bringing it into Snapz Pro X, I will say this. Many of the paradigms that we’ve incorporated into WireTap Studio are absolutely going to be rolled into a new version of Snapz Pro X (which we’re working on already). Hopefully I can touch on some of those features of the editor in WireTap Studio a bit to explain what I mean.

Speaking of the WireTap Studio editor, I played with it for a few hours and it is very easy on the eyes. How did you manage to create great features in the editor that look so good?

We can’t compete with high end editors, nor did we want to, so we wanted to be really, really good at what people do most often when editing audio. So the number one thing was picking the audio format. We have that nailed with LivePreview and being able to change the format/compression even after the fact. The number two thing people do is they crop audio. In a traditional editor, what this involves is you select the audio, you listen to it, you hit delete, then you add a fade in so the audio doesn’t “pop”, and if anything is wrong, you hit “Undo, Undo, Undo” and you do it all over again.

With WireTap Studio’s editor, all you do is drag the left or right crop marker. Audio that you’re cropping out is still visible, it just appears grayed out, and an automatic fade follows the crop marker. It’s that easy! If you’ve cropped too much to too little, you just drag it again, no need to undo anything. You can also change the duration of the fade just by dragging, and even change the type of fade. It all works in such an easy, natural manner that it makes it fun to edit audio.

We also do everything “live” in the editor, so you can see the waveform distort as you drag the fade, and if you delete audio, you actually see that audio gradually shrink from the recording. It’s not like other editors where you hit delete, and things just disappear, and you have no idea what happened. The animation isn’t just gratuitous. Sure, it makes it look cool, but it serves the purpose of visually showing people what happened to their audio when they made a change.

Another very cool aspect of the editor is that you can see every edit you’ve made to the audio. You don’t just see one big blob of a waveform, and have no idea what you changed or where, you can see every edit. And not only that, you can change the edits at any time. Delete some audio, and we’ll automatically put a fade out/fade in there for you, but if you deleted too much or too little audio, just click on the disclosure triangle about the cut mark, and you’ll see the audio you deleted, grayed out, visible in the editor. Then just drag the crop markers to change how much or how little audio is deleted! We really tried to make audio editing so easy that it’s fun again. Because the editing is completely non-destructive, you can really edit without fear, and dive right in to playing around with the audio, tweaking Audio Unit effects, whatever, without ever worrying about destroying your recording.

After you release WireTap Studio, what are your plans for the future?

My plan after releasing WireTap Studio is to issue a huge sigh of relief, and have a beer. Any recommendations? Victoria Bitter?

Haha, being an Australian I would have to go with a cold VB. How about future software updates? Any plans there?

Oh absolutely. We’re working on major updates to Snapz Pro X, using many of the lossless/non-destructive paradigms that you’ve seen in WireTap Studio. We also full expect to work on updates to WireTap Studio based on feedback from users. It’s great to ship a 1.0 product, but that’s always a starting point in some sense.

And of course, we also are working on updates to iToner to make sure that it works properly with Apple’s new iPhone 1.1.1 OS. We are also working on other secret projects that I’m not allowed to share. Suffice it to say that we are EXTREMELY busy with some software that I hope is really fantastic. We’re working hard on engineering tools that work naturally, and do the hard work for the user.

Sounds great and I hope the release of WireTap Studio goes well!

Thank you, and if you’d humor me, let me ask you a question now. You’ve used a pre-release version of WireTap Studio for a bit. What do you think?

I think it does what other audio apps can do but does it better, and with a whole lot of style. It also does a few things other audio tools can’t do. All the features are easy to use from capturing to editing and then exporting. One feature I had lots of fun playing with was LivePreview. Being able to hear what the final result will be and change the compression settings to improve your final result is really exciting. WireTap Studio won’t be easily outdone, and I personally can’t wait to buy it!

Thanks, I very much appreciate the feedback. We really did try to make the whole process fun and easy, rather than frustrating and tiresome. I appreciate your time, and thanks for giving me a chance to ramble on about our new baby!

Thanks to Andrew for sharing Ambrosia’s new app with us! You can learn more about WireTap Studio by checking out these videos Ambrosia has posted.

And now for the free schwag I mentioned above. If you’d like to win a copy of WireTap Studio (and who wouldn’t?), leave a comment below telling us, “features you’d like to see in WireTap Studio”. Winners will be announced in a week.

SRS iWow is a plugin for iTunes and is powered by Rouge Amoeba’s iTunes Enhancer technology. After installing the SRS iWow plugin, its window opens up when you open iTunes. You have the option of keeping it open or closing it (which reduces its already low processor load).

The plugin allows you to choose what type of speakers you are using (headphones, external, or laptop) and a preset or custom setting (although there is no way for you to save multiple custom settings). There are many customization options including SRS 3D (enhances the stereo environment), Definition (highlights high frequency details), FOCUS (changes the “height” of the sound stage), and TruBass (maximizes bass by adjusting the frequency of the low-pass filter). If you are an audiophile, the SRS audio enhancement website provides more technical details.

Not being a huge audiophile myself, I just stuck with the presets and did some testing with both my Logitech X-230 speakers (which I highly recommend) and the built-in speakers on my MacBook Pro. I was very impressed with the results on with all types of music. I also noticed a difference on the clarity of spoken-word audio files such as podcasts and audiobooks. The effect is of course more noticeable on lower quality speakers (ie. built-in speakers) but was still made a big enough difference on my Logitech speakers to make it worth the $19.99 it costs to purchase. I’d be curious to hear what an audiophile thinks as well as other people’s experiences.

I recommend highly recommend the SRS iWow plugin for iTunes from SRS Labs for anyone who spends time listening to either music or spoken word on their laptop or external speakers. You can download a free trial from SRS Labs and give it a try before you have to pay $19.99 to register the plugin.

SoundSource is a freeware app from the great developers at Rogue Amoeba. Quite simply, SoundSource sits on your toolbar at the top right of your screen, and allows you to switch between different audio input and output devices. It may seem unnecessary, but after trying to dig through numerous system preference menus just to switch between your built in mic and usb headset, SoundSource is a welcome simplification of the process. SoundSource is available from Rogue Amoeba for free.

This menu sums up SoundSource pretty good.

Max really is a powerful one-trick-pony, and that is precisely why I like it.

When ripping audio CDs Max offers some of the best tools in the business to ensure your music sounds exactly as it should in any format you choose. If some of your favorite CDs are badly damaged Max can use built-in comparison ripping for drives that cache audio, or the error correcting toolset from CD Paranoia. On some of my most damaged CDs I found Max to outperform virtually any other tool I have used previously, including of course iTunes.

But really what sets Max apart from the crowd is its ability to convert a list of tracks to multiple formats all at once. If you are producing audio for a number of different purposes this should be a real time saver. What’s more Max supports over 20 different flavours for your conversions including MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, AAC, Apple Lossless, Monkey’s Audio, WavPack, Speex, AIFF, and WAVE.

For those of you with serious conversion needs Max also allows you controls for how many processes are used for encoding, more tweaks for error correction, and a full set of parameters for each of the encoders.

Now if all of this wasn’t reason enough reason to switch to Max, the fact that it is a free open source application should really cinch the deal. Surf on over to Stephen’s site and grab yourself a copy today.

Crunch is a new app to convert video into Apple TV, iPod, and iPhone friendly formats. On deck is the ability to painlessly convert your videos for all your Apple devices. Keyword being painlessly.

It is shown to use a familiar drag-and-drop interface, with both QuickTime and some non-QuickTime formats – Div-X and MPEG-2 are to be supported as well. Roxio are also allowing the conversion of unprotected DVD’s and their VIDEO_TS folders, so you can expect .VOB support as well. Crunch is very iTunes friendly – automatically exporting crunched content to an iTunes folder, which is then automatigically synced to Apple TV.

Crunch promises to be “…a one-stop shop for all of your video conversion needs” offering simple drag, drop, and convert goodness. All in all it seems like a very classy and worthwhile app. All will be revealed on Tuesday 8th May, and is to be available for $50. Promo prices may also be available via the Roxio website.

In order to record a video or audio conference with Conference Recorder, you simply have to set up your preferences for recording. The Conference Recorder preference panel is seamlessly integrated into iChat’s preferences and enables you to customize the size, frame rate, and quality of your capture. It also lets you hide picture-in-picture during video recording and lets you customize Conference Recorder’s recording controls. Once you have set up the Conference Recorder preferences you can launch a video chat and record right away.

One of the best uses for Conference Recorder is podcasting. You can easily record long distance interviews and make round table podcast episodes with people around the world. Conference Recorder will also covert QuickTime files to MP3’s for easy use in GarageBand.

Currently, Conference Recorder is in version 2 and supports iChat AV 2.0 or later. Pick up a free trial or purchase Conference Recorder from the Ecamm Network. A license will run you just $13.46.

Trampoline is a bit of an unusual app. It puts a fresh spin on application launching. Instead of presenting the applications to you in a list or chart, it has them spread out around the edge of a circle. To launch an app, all you do is move your mouse into that application’s area and click. The window disappears and the application opens.

The default array of applications around the disc are the ones populating your dock. You can change these by opening the Trampoline preferences and selecting the ones that you want added. You can also add URLs and Folders. The applications that are open are indicated by a blue backdrop behind the icon, which is customizable.

Some people might say “Why don’t you just put the apps you need quickly in the dock?” My answer is productivity, and space. The way that I have Trampoline set-up, is that when I squeeze the side buttons on my Mighty Mouse, Trampoline opens. Then all I have to do is move my mouse a half-inch and click, to launch the app I need. This is much faster than having to drag the mouse down to the dock, especially for someone with a 30-inch display.

Trampoline also saves desktop space. If you need every inch of your desktop, Trampoline could be quite a useful tool for you. You can minimize the dock and still be able to access all of the documents and applications that are important to you.

In my time using Trampoline, I found there wasn’t a lot wrong with it. The only problem may be if you have many applications added, as it may take a few seconds to find the application you are looking for. Trampoline can be purchased for $19.95 from Old Jewel Software, and is also available for a limited time from Macheist.

Speaking of the contest, time is running out to get your entries in so I will give you a little update. As of tonight we have just a few videos, but a couple really stick out. We also have a few audio clips, and some unique imagery. I will say that right now anyone with a good idea and a few hours to kill on their Mac, could easily run away with this huge giveaway. I’m not sure why more people aren’t submitting funny or satirical type of entries as a switcher’s story contest pretty much begs for it.

Only 72 hours left for submissions! If you have a good idea for a quick 3 minute video or audio clip, better get on it now. Remember any reasonable entry will be added to the draw for a random winner. Thanks again to those competing and submitting entries, its been tons of fun wading through these all week.

NetNewsWire Ranchero Software, $25.95

Pros: Free Lite version available, auto-collection, smart folders, search, synchronization with newsgator service, scriptable, built-in efficient web browser.

Cons: No item threading, No ability to put items in context, No spotlight integration, No customizable color labels, lowest automatic refresh time is 30 minutes.

Newsfire Dave Watanabe, $20

Pros: Sleek design, efficiently functional interface, integrated search, smart folders, integrates with several desktop del.icio.us applications such as Pukka, fairly quick automatic refresh time of merely 5 minutes.

Cons: No Labels, no AI for efficient Smart Folders, no way to archive feeds, no integrated synchronization.

Newslife ThinkMac Software, $20, Public Beta

Pros: Easy to use, familiar and efficient interface, works seamlessly with OS X apps like Safari and iTunes, includes tools for quick posting to social bookmarking sites like digg and del.icio.us, “Speck” article text to speech capabilities.

Cons: In beta and still rather buggy, fastest automatic refresh time is 20 minutes, $20 is a rather steep price for it’s present state- even though it’s in public beta the nag screens can become quite an annoyance.

Vienna Open Community UK, Freeware, Open Source

Pros: Simple and easy-to-use interface, smart folders, ability to flag individual articles.

Cons: Vienna cannot learn which item to place in a smart folder by experience, no colored labels for organizing items, very little support for podcasts or any other media delivered via RSS, no integration with online RSS services.

Safari RSS Apple Inc., Bundled with Mac OS X

Pros: Built into OS X, allows for integrated RSS reading and web browsing seamlessly, Solid search and archiving, modifiable article length.

Cons: Safari may not be your browser of preference so the advantage of having RSS integrated in your web browser (though there are a few more browsers with this same capability, notably firefox), most of the “standard” features (smart folders, social bookmarking etc.) are not present.

Conclusion: Go with Newsfire if you have the money, otherwise go with NetNewsWire Lite. Both have solid, intuitive interfaces, and the great features you’ve come to expect from modern RSS applications.

I noticed last fall that the developers of AudioExpress by Real Mac Software decided to discontinue work on the project so they can devote more time to RapidWeaver. Dan posted this:

‘I just wanted to make everyone aware that we are no longer distributing or selling AudioExpress and ButtonBuilder.

We really loved these apps, but feel we just can’t devote enough time to keep them up-to-date. For anyone who has already purchased either app, we will of course continue to offer help & support until the end of the year.’

The good news is I saw in their forum they have decided to release the serial number for AudioExpress and allow people to use the app for free. And we all like the smell of free don’t we?

AudioExpress is a dead simple sound recorder for Mac that allows you to record via the built-in mic or an iSight. It does what it was designed to do quite well and interfaces nicely with iTunes or your iPod.

Anyways I figured someone out there could use the serial code and download link as they are not published anywhere obvious. Download AudioExpress. Happily plug in the free serial:

Serial Number: ADOXPRS000-300E-B7C4-9E1G-2QNA-0649

Enjoy

Call Recorder is a simple plugin for Skype that sits as a little floating window when you open the app. When you’re in a conversation, either Skype-to-Skype or Skype-to-phone, simply hit the big red record button to save the call until it ends or until you hit the stop button. The resulting recording gives you both sides of the conversation at the full quality you originally heard it in, which is just what you want for a podcast or personal phone call for your own records. With the newest version of Call Recorder, you can record one or both sides of video chats as well.

Call Recorder also allows you to customize settings for how the call is recorded. You get to choose what kind of compression you use to record, including AAC of various quality or uncompressed QuickTime movie files. You can even choose to automatically record all incoming or outgoing calls, which would be a great option for logging all your talking activity if Skype is your main “landline.” All of these great features do come at a bit of a price at US$14.95, but if all you need to do is record Skype, you’ll save money by going for Call Recorder rather than other options. Ecamm has a seven-day trial of Call Recorder for Skype, so check it out here.

MacApper Public Service Announcement: Please remember to check your local laws when recording phone conversations without consent.

In the digital world, Sound Byte from Black Cat Software will emulate a cart machine right on your Mac. The cross-platform virtual cart machine is available in three flavors: Sound Byte Lite, Sound Byte and Sound Byte Pro. The difference between the three, besides price, is the amount of racks you can have. Each rack contains 75 carts that you can load up with any audio. The Lite version comes with one rack, regular comes with five and pro comes with 50 for up to 3,750 carts.

One of my favorite things about Sound Byte is it’s simplicity. It’s as simple as dragging and dropping your audio file on a cart in your rack and when you click on it, it plays. Click on it again and it stops. You can even overlap audio by starting one when another is already playing.

But overall, my favorite feature of Sound Byte is assigning carts to a key. As a podcaster producing a weekly show, I have begun using Sound Byte to cue up different audio elements including show intros and outros, promos, sweepers and any clips extracted from the web or radio. I assign each cart to a number on my keyboard in order of when it will be played on my show, so I can cue up the show intro by pressing the number one and so on.

I have tried several other applications for cueing up music including DJ-1800, separate Quicktime windows and even iTunes and none do quite the job that Sound Byte does.

Below is a list of other uses for Sound Byte:

• Radio Stations – jingles, advertisements, PSAs, songs, announcements, and more.
• Plays and radio/TV productions – perfect for playing sound effects.
• Sports events – play sound effects when a team scores, etc.
• Music collections – organize and easily play your songs.
• Ham radio – use for generating CQ calls, for contesting etc.

Sound Byte supports aiff, wav, au, mp3, aac and m4a audio formats and starts at $24 for the lite version. You can download a trial copy of Sound Byte to test out for yourself at Black Cat Systems

Just as a quick background, GigaVox Media was founded by Doug Kaye of IT Conversations. Kaye is one of the first real podcasters, and in the past several years he’s produced thousands and thousands of hours of audio interviews with tech luminaries. In short, Kaye and the guys at GigaVox know a thing or two about how stuff should sound. If you know anything about editing audio, you know that the editing can in many cases take three or four times longer than the recording itself, and that’s on a good day. Kaye soon realized that all in all, the editing of these interviews went rougly the same, so he helped develop The Levelator to automate the process of level adjusting, sound compression, limiting, and other factors.

It would be a great disservice to say that The Levelator is just a sound compression tool. Using a bit of arcane “black magic,” The Levelator doesn’t do a typical compression job, it uses both very short-term and very long-term look-ahead to generate an overall loudness profile of the audio and then adjusts levels of many individual slices of the file with multiple passes. If you’re feeling left in the dust with all of this audio talk, don’t worry – The Levelator is extremely easy to use. Just drop an uncompressed WAV or AIFF onto it, and it will churn away, getting your levels just right. If you do any audio interviewing at all, The Levelator will, appropriately to its namesake, adjust all the levels to get them matched and sounding top-notch.

The Levelator, for all its greatness, is absolutely free! Download version 1.1.0 here.