President Obama seems to have a pretty low opinion of video games, and has mentioned them three times recently. He said it was important  that children, ’step away from the video games and spend more time playing outside.’ Maybe that’s a fair point, but the US government has never shown any adult understanding of video games, just kneejerk tabloid reactions.

Do games offer anything more than teaching kids violent or unsocial behaviour? I don’t believe they do either, so I asked around to see what other people thought they had learned from games…

Here’s some of what we came up with:

1: A repeated claim is that they have taught people patience! Not everyone plays patiently, but if, for example you ever played something like Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins, you’ll know that you really need it if you want to complete some games.

2: Reaction times and hand-eye coordination are obviously necessary for lots of games.

3: Problem analysis & creative thinking. Puzzle, adventure and strategy games often require a lot of thought. Have a go at Portal, and you’ll see how games can really challenge you to think differently.

4: One person cited Finances & resource management, as something they’d learnt from games. I can see how that’s possible, but have to admit they have never had that effect on me…

5: Computer literacy. Essential in today’s world, and I’m sure many people of my generation at least got started with computer skills through games. From messing around with Basic on the Commodore 64, to optimizing PCs in the early 90s, games were and are a motivation for learning about your computer in ways that Microsoft Excel never will be.

6: Driving. People had mixed things to say about driving, that they learnt about driving theory from games and also that games taught them they should never drive! I like driving games, because I could never drive like I do virtually on real roads.

Of course, another matter is whether this should be an issue at all. Paintings, movies and music aren’t required to be useful beyond being art. Video games are perhaps getting closer to being considered works of art, but until that happens the media is likely to continue their focus on worries about their negative effects, while ignoring any positive effects they might have.

Do games teach people anything else useful?

Hunch.com is a recently launched ‘decision engine’, which has got quite a bit of attention due to one of the company being Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake.

Microsoft’s heavily covered Bing has been called a decision engine - by Microsoft - which I don’t understand as it’s just a search engine. I think it’s a good search engine, for what it’s worth, but not a decision engine. Hunch is what you’d expect a decision engine to be. You ask a question like,

“Should I get an iPhone or a Pre?” and it helps you make a decision. In theory.

It’s still growing, not all questions work, and it’s very much a US site - English people have to remember to say vacation, not holiday! I thought I’d put Hunch through it’s paces and see if I agreed with it. To my first question, above, Hunch said I was 99% in favour of an iPhone. I tried Xbox 360 versus Playstation 3, and was told I was 60% in favour of an Xbox. That’s lucky, as I’ve already got one.

These questions weren’t so hard, though. I could make my own mind up about purchases, so I moved on to more important life issues. First up, “What should I eat for lunch?”. I wasn’t too impressed with Hunch’s answers. It suggested Indian or Chines food, and Pasta. It might as well have suggested I wanted “food” for lunch. I want specifics!

Hunch asks you a series of questions to get to know you better, but it still doesn’t know me that well, so perhaps I should forgive it not being specific.  However, my second important question was “Should I get married?” Personally, I don’t think so: I’m a 21st century citizen, and don’t need such arcane public institutions! However:

…apparently I’m wrong! Should I trust a decision engine more than my own brain? I think I’ll buy an iPhone, go and eat some ‘food’ and think about it.

Although it started over three years ago, the Twitter phenomenon has gone into overdrive in 2009. Its importance in breaking news and reaching the areas that traditional news outlets simply can’t have been well documented and the current political situation in Iran is a perfect case in point. Even the US State Department has asked Twitter not to perform maintenance and thus risk blocking crucial tweets from emerging out of Iran. Meanwhile others have suggested that Twitter may be the most important thing to hit the net since Google.

However, are we getting a bit carried away with the reliability and effectiveness of what Twitter can do? Isn’t it a bit worrying when even the US State Department starts relying on Twitter to maybe formulate foreign policy? And the more popular it becomes, isn’t there a danger that an over reliance in it could be both politically dangerous for governments, embarrassing for news organizations and potentially taint how authentic tweets actually are as spammers, commercial organisations and governments join in.

We’ve already seen a study that has punctured the myth of exactly how popular Twitter is. Harvard University found that a paltry 10% of Twitter users generate over 90% of the content. When you see how much content high profile tweeters like Stephen Fry, Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher create, this isn’t as hard to believe as it may at first sound. It also found that half of all users update their pages less than once every 74 days and that most people only ever tweet once during their lifetime. It’s clear then that relying on Twitter as some kind of “democratic miracle” is fraught with problems.

In the case of Iran however, there’s no doubt that Twitter has provided an invaluable outlet in a country where getting a true picture of events isn’t easy. During the 20 year commemoration of the Tienanmen Square massacre in China, Twitter also proved one of the few ways of people getting their voices heard despite authorities trying to block them. As a blogging man myself however, I’m prone to agree with bloggers such as Muhammad Saleem who point out that one of the “hidden” dangers of Twitter is the brevity of tweets. There’s no scope to write any detailed analysis or context in a microblog of just 140 characters.

Saleem also makes the salient point that with Twitter, there is a far greater danger of information overload. It can take a while just to filter the wheat from the chaff when you’re trying to filter hundreds of tweets, many of which are garbled in order to fit more words in. A search for #Iranelection provides the perfect example. In the time it takes you to scan the first five to ten Tweets, you’ll be told that there are already another 150-odd new messages matching your search. It is simply impossible for anyone to accurately stay on top of, let alone filter, such a vast weight of opinion.

There’s no doubt that there’s some valuable information being tweeted every day on Twitter. But there needs to be a much better way to filter genuine breaking news from inane tweets. And the more popular it becomes and the more organizations like the US State Department start taking an interest, the more skeptical you have to become.

A lot of people are beginning to talk about Opera’s special announcement planned for next week. A special page on the developer’s website states that at 9 a.m. this Tuesday, Opera will “reinvent the web”. But what could they be talking about?

Checking out the page’s source code [thanks to Pallab for this!] reveals this secret message:

<!– 	We start our little story with the invention of the modern day computer.
Over the years, the computers grew in numbers, and the next natural step in the
evolution was …  –>

This little teaser has also begun to show up on Twitter, along with the next part which continues:

“… to connect them together. To share things … #reinvent http://www.opera.com/freedom”

Our natural assumption when we saw all this was: Opera 10’s about to drop. That’d be great news and it’d just about explain a bit of viral hype building on Opera’s side. However, if we are looking at the release of version 10, Opera are being much more reticent than normal. Our request for a preview (which would normally be answered with a URL to download the final version under embargo) was answered with a cryptic message stating that Opera will be unveiling ‘a new technology‘ on Tuesday, and that there’ll be a live webcast.

Operawatch has plenty of interesting comments regarding what the exciting announcement might be (the least exciting of which would be a beta for the new version of Opera Mini - I mean, come on!). The most likely idea seems to be something to do with cloud computing (see the pic?) .

Our best guess is that Opera will announce that their new browser will feature a ubiquitous experience across devices and machines with everything possible (cookies, history, bookmarks and more) handled in the cloud. It’s difficult to imagine quite how far they’ll take server side technology, but looking at the company’s history, this is definitely the direction they’re heading in.

Got a better guess? Let us know….

Although some bloggers are hailing it as a “new” release from Google, Google Quick Search Box was included as part of the Google Codes project earlier this year but it’s now been given an official release by Google with its own webpage. And you can see why Google think the tool is fitting of a major release. Google Quick Search Box is a basically a Spotlight style app that can search for just about anything both on and offline as well as launch apps.

In this way, it’s very similar to Google Desktop except it’s far more discreet and lightweight and there’s no annoying indexing to wait for. Rather, Google Quick Search Box floats on your desktop ready for action whenever you need it. Previously, it only performed basic searches on your hard and online but this official release makes it an altogether more powerful proposition.

Google Quick Search Box can performs more through hard drive and online searches and even launch applications. As you’d expect from a Google product, searches are incredibly detailed and quick and results are displayed clearly. Search for “Firefox” for example and it immediately brings-up the Firefox icon ready for launching. In this way, Google Quick Search Box acts not only as a search tool, but as a launcher as well.

You can even customise Google Quick Search Box to search only those online sites that you choose such as YouTube, Wikipedia, Gmail and Google Docs. To search both your Gmail and Google Docs account, you need to enter your Gmail account credentials in the “Accounts” section in preferences. However, when I tried to search my accounts using Google Quick Search Box, the search seemed to hang for a while and no results were found. Whether this was an error on my side or a bug I’m not sure but it was a little disappointing. Read the rest of this entry »

At the E3 conference, all three console manufacturers announced new motion sensing controllers - from Nintendo’s Wii-motion and Sony’s wand, to Microsoft’s controller-less Project Natal. Along with recent improvements in touchscreen technology, it’s reasonable to conclude control will change quite a lot over the coming months and years.

Here’s Microsoft’s promotional video for Natal

That looks pretty energetic to me!  Like the Wii, I imagine this will be loads of fun, but won’t replace existing controls either - after all, wireless joypads allow you to play in a relaxed way, and sometimes that’s fine. As I wrote a while ago, I think if we treat new methods of control as replacements, we’re in danger of losing good things that aren’t broken.

I would be happy to have a touchscreen monitor, or one that I could manipulate with gestures. But as long as we still use writing, having a physical keyboard will be essential. Watching the PlayStation’s motion controller in action, it looks good, but a little inaccurate - it still looks a lot harder to pick stuff up on screen than it does in real life.

With some development though, it might be a nice way to interact with your Windows desktop. Using your hands to grab things on the screen and move them around would be cool. Personally, I think control from a distance is much more sensible for large devices. A touchscreen for my phone or laptop, but here in the office I wouldn’t want to be stretching to touch my screens all the time.

So far I’ve heard a lot about PC touchscreens but for me - and maybe I’m  lazy - I like the idea of sitting back from a screen, so motion sensing controllers sound much more exciting. How long it takes for anything like this to be adapted for PCs or Windows is anyone’s guess though.

Google entered the browsing wars with Google Chrome for Windows just under a year ago and according to a study by Net Applications, it’s already become the fourth biggest browser out there with almost 2% of the market. Mac fans can now try Google Chrome for themselves although it’s worth noting that this is strictly a developer release meaning some features (such as bookmarking and Flash movies) are not working yet.

This release only works on Intel Macs and is prone to bugs and instability but it’s enough to give you a good idea as to what the finished product will look and feel like. The first thing I noticed about Google Chrome is that it’s unbelievably lightweight. While Firefox was consuming anything from 20-30% of my Mac’s CPU, Chrome barely registered on the scale occasionally touching 3%.

For anyone who’s plagued with Firefox memory leaks and crashes, this alone is surely going to be a compelling reason to give Chrome a go. As you’d expect, Google Chrome also features a type of tabbed browsing which improves on Firefox’s slightly cramped user experience.

Google Chrome is also extremely quick. Surfing the Softonic site, page loads took less then a second and all images were loaded very quickly. YouTube in particular loaded with lightening speed but unfortunately, because the Flash player is disabled in this developer release, it wasn’t possible to test watching videos.

However, sometimes, it simply produced nothing when trying to find the YouTube homepage and maybe this is one of the bugs Google are working on. Overall however, the handling of sites using JavaScript in particular was mightily impressive. I also like the way that when you open Chrome, it displays windows of your most visited sites so you can click on them to go straight to them.

If only there were more extensions for Google Chrome, I’d seriously consider converting when the final build is released. Before that happens though, it will need to get much more popular. Based on this first proof, Safari and Firefox may well have a real fight on their hands.

The Sims is the kind of game you either love or hate. I fall into the first category but at the same time I know people who get bored of playing it after two minutes. I’m not sure whether the long-awaited third iteration of the title will make them get to love the game. But I do know that this new version of the popular game franchise will thrill all Sims fans worldwide, and will surely meet whatever expectations they had about The Sims 3.

While maintaining the game’s main structure and storyline, The Sims 3 includes many new features. To begin with, there’s only one town to play with when starting the game - unlike The Sims 2, where you could choose between three. The next logical step is creating your first sim, and the moment you enter the all-new sim editor you begin to realize how much better The Sims 3 is than its predecessors.

The insanely detailed sim editor is a powerful tool with which you can create sims and customize them in every way you can think of. When designing their body and facial shape, you can use simple templates with pre-defined physical characteristics, or go a bit deeper by customizing specific areas: nose, chin, eyes, ears, etc. You can even add freckles, beauty spots and other small details.

As for clothes, there’s quite a wide choice - just like previous editions of the game - only that this time you can customize many of the available pieces of clothing with colors and patterns of your choice. Oddly, bikinis have disappeared from the girls’ swimsuit menu. There are also many more accessories (sunglasses, earrings and the likes) and generally speaking, much more detailed options to create your sim. For example, you can set color highlights for hair, as well as define eyelashes length!

Besides physical appearance, the editor also helps you define your sim’s personality. You no longer need to distribute points among several fixed criteria. The Sims 3 lets you select up to five personality traits from a wide variety of them, regarding different areas in a sim’s life such as the personal, professional or social areas. Some of these traits are brave, friendly, ambitious, coach potato, friendly, charismatic, mean, neurotic, good sense of humor, commitment issue, dislikes children or loves the outdoors, among others. Depending on your choice of traits, you’ll be given a selection of five possible life goals from which you can choose one for your sim. Again, there are many more options than in previous versions of The Sims. Read the rest of this entry »

Nokia launched its new mobile app store yesterday, Ovi Store, to howls of derision from users. The general hoo-hah centred around the speed of the service, which in the eyes of many, made the launch a total disaster. Yes, it was very, very slow for a while, but that’s par for the course given the amount of hype the app store had received before. It’s worth bearing in mind also that the worldwide release actually took place ahead of schedule. The hole-picking has continued in the first 24-hours of Ovi Store’s life - not enough content, no trial versions, flawed category system, users can only give programs ratings of between one and three stars, etc. True, these glitches and oversights  give Ovi Store a less-than polished feel, but is it really all that bad?

Ever the optimist, I wouldn’t regard the Ovi Store as an unmitigated disaster and managed to find some things about it that I actually quite like. For instance, it’s a lot more open than the walled iPhone App Store. You can get download links sent directly to your phone from any computer, send to a friend, or install it directly on the device. Once downloaded you can launch the app immediately without leaving the browser (of course iPhone users wouldn’t understand the concept of running multiple apps simultaneously). The fact that Ovi Store supports operator billing with many networks means buying apps is much less hassle than with an iTunes account. The user interface isn’t as bad as many people are making out. I like the fact that screenshots are displayed for all programs and the ‘related programs’ section is useful too.

Let’s not forget that Ovi Store has only been going for a day, so we shouldn’t condemn it to death just yet, especially when it shows signs of promise. Given time, glitches will be ironed out and big-name mobile developers like Google and Yahoo! will come on board. In terms of being a disaster, I think the Ovi Store is more like falling off a lilo than the sinking of the Titanic.

Critics of Apple fanatics have said that there’s nothing special about Apple, and it’s unfair for Microsoft to be labeled an uncool big corporation, when Apple is just a big corporation too.

Nevertheless, Apple products do have that special something that makes them likable. In the case of OSX, that special something is just being smooth and fast and working properly.  The iPhone effect on the mobile industry has been incredible. It’s incredible any company could jump into a developed market and revolutionise it just like that, and it’s incredible no established mobile manufacturer had made something that worked that well before.

There is something cool about Apple, and as a corporation they seem to get a lot more right than many. It’s a surprise, then, that the iPhone App Store seems to be getting stuck in controversies.

First was the Babyshaker app, that was bizarrely approved even though it was obviously offensive. Then Apple failed to approve applications for really odd reasons. The Nine Inch Nails app, that would allow users to link to an album with potentially offensive lyrics was banned, despite that material being easily available through iTunes (it was later accepted).

Now we have Eucalyptus, a reader that uses an online library of out of copyright literature. It was rejected on the grounds that you could read Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - an English translation from the 1800s! The developer wisely pointed out this library is freely available on the internet, and you’ll only find that book if you expressly search for it, as you would using Apple’s own Safari. Apple have now accepted the application - but they must have people in their approval system with very strict ideas about objectionable material.

It all seems very un-Apple, and tarnishes their image as “the cool corporation”. Arbitrary bureaucratic absurdity is the thing of governments and faceless corporations - why are Apple doing it? Perhaps these strange decisions are just wrinkles in the system that will be ironed out. There are so many apps being submitted, maybe its not so bad to make the odd mistake.

Fans of speech recognition will be interested to hear that Yahoo! has added a voice search facility to its popular iPhone client. Disappointingly though, the new feature, which works in a similar way to the speech input within the Google Mobile App, seems to be hard of hearing.

Keen to further my knowledge of Australian music, I started by politely requesting “Kylie Minogue”. The program immediately returned an error saying it hadn’t understood me. I asked again, this time speaking louder and slower. Still nothing. After five attempts that returned errors, Yahoo! finally produced the results - for “a and aa”. Not only was this a million miles away from what I’d requested but I now looked a fool in front of the whole office. So, I thought I’d make things a bit easier for the voice recognition engine (and for my reputation) and said “hello”. Yahoo! thought I’d said “inn”. I tried “software” and it thought I said “cotton”.

I’m not sure whether it’s a general weakness in the functionality, or if it’s my refined English accent that’s causing the problem, but something’s definitely not right here. It annoys me that a company with a reputation such as Yahoo! would take the trouble to introduce such a potentially revolutionary function, and make it so poor as to be completely unusable. The voice search in Google isn’t much better, and that’s after having apparently added special support for English and Australian accents.

If you’ve managed to get the voice search in Yahoo! for iPhone working I’d be very interested to hear from you to find out what accent you have. And while you’re at it, could you find out Kylie Minogue’s tour dates for me?

What are we expecting from the Worldwide Developers Conference in June? Lots of people are predicting that Palm will launch their much hyped Pre handset on June 7th, just a day before the Apple conference begins. Maybe Palm are hoping to overshadow any Apple announcements, but that looks dangerous to me, as Apple are likely to have some cool stuff up their sleeves.

Here at OnSoftware we’ve been wondering out loud what might happen, so starting with the most likely things, here we go:

1: Snow Leopard. Surely there’ll be an exhibition of the next version of OSX, 10.6, which sounds like it will build on what is already my favourite operating system. The most interesting thing about it for me is that it will have an overall smaller hard drive and RAM footprint (like Windows 7) - efficiency is always a good thing. We know that Windows 7 is lighter so it can work on netbooks…. Probability: 100%

2: The next surest thing, and it’s a pretty sure thing too, is an announcement of a third generation iPhone. What’s it going to be like? I wouldn’t expect much of a visual difference (it won’t be available in pink any time soon), but should do the things people think it should already do, like video capture or maybe a compass (like the HTC Magic). Perhaps you’ll be able to alter the backlight time too? Reading that back, maybe Palm are right to gamble, or maybe Apple have something really cool for the next gen iPhone? Probability: 90%

2.5:  Rumours abound that working with Verizon, there might be an iPhone lite in the works, and some have claimed to have actually seen the device. It’s worth remembering that Apple went as far as creating fake prototypes to keep people from knowing the truth about the original iPhone… I think an iPhone lite is a pretty underwhelming concept too. Probability: 30%

3: Mystery item! With all the stories about Apple ordering 10 inch touchscreens, Snow Leopard being easier on resources and the success of netbooks in general, there are many predicting Apple will announce something between a Macbook and iPhone. Tim Cook, Apple’s COO recently said that netbooks “suck”, but that could be a precursor to “but ours are cool”. Bets are divided between some kind of netbook or keyboard free tablet device. The 10 inch touchscreen tablet sounds like a sweet idea - a device for browsing and watching media. However, in my head that looks like a big iPhone, which shows a lack of imagination on my part! Probability: 50%

We’ve seen numerous alleged photos of Apple netbooks, or Macbook minis, but none of them look convincing (or good!)!

*thanks to our resident Apple insider Tom for the secret Apple iPhonebook image!

It has become something of a mantra over the last few months: as soon as a major event happens somewhere (or everywhere) in the world, bloggers and then journalists are quick to point to the speed at which news of the event spread on Twitter. For many people (including myself), the so-called microblogging tool has turned from being a slightly self-conscious way of publishing one’s current status, into a vital means of communication and a first contact point for interesting links, breaking news and the birth of memes.

But this week seems to have seen almost totally enthusiastic coverage of the tool (except from people who didn’t understand it), turn into a qualified criticism and the warning that though useful, Twitter can also be dangerous.

The reason behind these warning is simple: swine flu and the multiple rumours about it that have been disseminated through Twitter. Evgeny Morozov at Foreign Policy wrote:

Despite all the recent Twitter-enthusiasm about this platform’s unique power to alert millions of people in decentralized and previously unavailable ways, there are quite a few reasons to be concerned about Twitter’s role in facilitating an unnecessary global panic about swine flu.

Now, it’s this last bit that interests me. Perhaps I’m not the power-tweeter that I could be but I know where I first learned about the threat of a swine flu pandemic. Not on Twitter, but on the BBC news, and the Catalan TV news here in Barcelona, and the BBC website, and the Guardian’s website, and then CNN, the Spanish news, and more on the BBC again. A few hours later, I was updating Twitter and saw the first message from a contact referring to the outbreak. A former colleague who lives in Mexico City was relating the steps he and his fiancée were taking to stay safe amid the growing concern in that city. Read the rest of this entry »

“If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” So wrote George Orwell in his famous essay Politics and the English language. I couldn’t help thinking about this when I read the word “Pirates” suddenly being used to describe file sharers in The Guardian yesterday.

Other UK media outlets have picked up on the trend. Odeo writes “UK file pirates to face the music”. Meanwhile Newser reports “UK file pirates could lose net privileges”. Rewind to before the Pirate Bay guilty verdict and it was quite a different story. “Does legal action against file sharers dissuade others?” read one Guardian headline, “File-sharers want to have your cake and eat it too.” read another. Perhaps The Guardian headline “Online file sharers buy more music” compared to yesterday’s headline “Study finds pirates 10 times more likely to buy music” couldn’t better illustrate the case in point.

Pirates are all the rage nowadays what with hijacking ships in Somalia and the high profile Pirate Bay trial, it’s inevitable that some bright spark would eventually coin the phrase for file sharers. Due to the recent ship hijackings however, the word pirate has taken on increasingly negative connotations. Piracy was a common term to describe any kind of illegal copying but a “pirate” for most of us was a bearded bloke with an eye-patch, one wooden leg and a parrot on his shoulder. Using the word to refer to file sharers tars them with the same criminal brush as the pirates that are currently running amok in the world’s waterways.

The effect is that it will naturally dissuade people from file sharing of any kind. No one wants to be branded as a pirate nowadays after all. Millions of files, folders, audio and video are exchanged every day perfectly legally. The result of the Pirate Bay trial should not be seen as a green light to demonise file sharing on the net. Besides, the result of the trial can hardly be taken seriously now that its emerged the judge was also a member of a copyright lobby group prompting calls for a retrial. That’s a bit like Dick Cheney deciding whether an inmate at Guantanamo is guilty or not.

I don’t believe there is a media vendetta against file sharers. The article using the term pirates in The Guardian was actually highlighting a Norwegian study that found those that downloaded music illegally were more likely than those that don’t to buy music. The point however, as Orwell made, is that use of language is a powerful tool that can shape thought. In an age when a term can spread like wild fire over the internet, that’s more relevant than ever before.

King Kong, Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre. What do they all have in common? Well, apart from madmen (or an ape) it’s that they’re all remakes that don’t live up to the original. In my mind, WireTap Studio never quite lived up to WireTap Pro which, despite being discontinued by Ambrosia Software in 2007, is still the best audio recorder on the Mac. I still prefer the Pro version because of it’s simplicity, discreetness and easy of use.

Nowadays, you won’t find any mention of WireTap Pro on Ambrosia’s website (apart from old press releases) but they have at least provided the last available download link for it (version 1.3.4). Firstly, I don’t think Wiretap Studio is a bad application (certainly nowhere near as bad as the Texas Chainsaw remake), but it’s the simplicity, flexibility and no fuss ease-of-use of WireTap Pro that gives it the edge.

WireTap Pro lets you switch between recording from your microphone or speakers in a click. Both are clearly highlighted on front of the main recording panel which is small and discreet. Clicking on them highlights one or the other or both if you want to record from both sources. The highlighting is a little obscure and could have done with being a bit clearer but just squint a little and you’ll see which one is activated. Press the record button and you’re done! This simplicity is precisely why I like WireTap Pro so much. Just remember that if you choose to record both from the microphone and internal speaker, make sure you wear headphones otherwise WireTap Pro will record both the internal and external output at the same time. So, if you’re recording a telephone conversation, it will record the respondents voice twice and make them sound like a doppelganger or something!

When you click stop to stop recording, WireTap Studio immediately prompts you to give a name to the recorded file that it saves within the WireTap Pro folder. This folder can be browsed and accessed independently of WireTap Pro - one of the things lost in WireTap Studio is that it only allows you to listen and manage files through the application itself. There’s no mucking around with configuring input channels, sound levels and there’s no annoying bleeping or audio warnings that you’re recording which is ideal for recording phone conversations.

However, that’s not to say there’s not plenty of room for tinkering. There are a set of options to change the graphic equalizer and you can choose from 4 recording formats - AIFF, MP3, AAC and Quicktime. The default is AIFF which is a bit annoying but I just changed it to MP3 in a click.

Finally, as an added bonus, WireTap Pro offers an automatic recording tool for radio shows, podcasts and other web broadcasts that can be scheduled according to when they are aired. Of course, nowadays, iTunes and other apps offer this and many web broadcasts are archived for later listening anyway. However, for those that don’t, it’s a great way to keep track of your favourite broadcasts. Unfortunately, it can’t actually open the web stream for you though - you’ll have to be on hand to do that but you could always leave it streaming and set WireTap Pro to record while you’re away.

So there you have it. If WireTap Pro were a film, it would definitely be the 1969 original of The Italian Job compared to WireTap Studio which would be the 2003 remake. I’m sure Michael Caine would agree.