Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we've got questions about getting an iPhone, disposing of old Macs, wake from sleep issues, exchanging a recent Mac purchase, podcast hardware and software, and more.

As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Questions for next week should be left in the comments. When asking a question please include which machine you're running and which version of Mac OS X (we'll assume you're running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify). And now, on to the questions.

Tom asks:

I'm considering an iPhone but want to know what my options are. Is the iPhone the best smartphone if I'm a Mac user?

The short answer to that question is "Yes." The iPhone is the best smartphone for you if you use a Mac. It's designed by Apple to work seamlessly with your Mac and iTunes and for the most part, it does. For Mac users the iPhone offers the best user experience possible and keeps you, at least hardware-wise, entirely in the Apple fold.

That said, the iPhone itself may or may not be the best smartphone for your needs. One drawback is that it's only available if you are an AT&T wireless customer. So, unless you are already an AT&T customer, or are willing to switch, you are out of luck.

Plus, using AT&T on a daily basis can sometimes be challenging as it's network occasionally has issues. Also, the coverage in some areas is not quite as good as other networks such as Verizon -- even in larger cities such as Los Angeles, where I live.

I love podcasting.

My first podcasts weren't really podcasts, just recordings that I made and uploaded to a website in the late 90's so that other people could listen to them. Unlike the podcasts we know and love today, there was no way to subscribe to all of the episodes that I recorded. When podcasting as we know it hit the world in 2004, I started hosting podcasts through one of my companies.

Despite creating two long-running podcasts between 2004 and 2007, I finally gave up because of the time involved. Part of the problem was due to me being a stickler for perfection in my podcasts, while the rest was due to the fact that I was stuck with podcasting when I was near my iMac and could edit and update a feed file on a regular basis.

Earlier this month, I decided that I wanted to start up a personal podcast again. Yeah, I talk about tech, but for the most part I wanted this to be a free-form podcast that could talk about photography one day, music the next, and the joys of being a cat owner the third. Since my calendar is already pretty well jammed, the only way I was going to be able to commit to doing a podcast every day was to get the podcast workflow down to as little time as possible.

There's no shortage of podcasting equipment out there for amateurs or professionals. These audio devices can range from a few bucks to a few thousand bucks, which sometimes makes it difficult to figure out exactly what equipment is best for you. Well, lucky for you Dan Benjamin at Hivelogic has written a very thorough article on the best equipment in every price range. It covers all bases, from the person who has never recorded before to the person making the leap into the "pro" category and ready to drop a grand to improve audio quality.

As an amateur podcaster myself I was a little surprised that my beloved Ubercaster and Blue Snowball were left out in the cold, but the article is still very helpful to people looking for the best hardware and software at different price points. If you've been considering buying or upgrading your gear, this is the article to read.

In the video below I quickly run through the basics of Soundboard, from Ambrosia Software (makers of WireTap Studio and Snapz Pro, but they've made Mac apps and games for years). It's just what you'd think: a series of buttons tied to sounds, just like you'd see at a radio station for live broadcasting.

But Soundboard brings the drag-and-drop ease of desktop computing to the table, and adds several small features that add up. Namely: quick editing and loop controls. Plus, you can route your audio using Soundflower, or just play what you want through speakers. Given the number of crank calls I made as a kid, I'm glad this wasn't around.

Soundboard normally sells for $29, but there's a free trial and you get 25% off if you're a WireTap owner. Also, Ambrosia is encouraging Sound Byte users to switch over with a $19 deal for registered owners of that application. If you've ever wanted a live radio show like Dingo and the Baby, then Soundboard may be just what you need.


Incidentally, the screencast above was made using the excellent site, Screenr.com. If the video won't play on an iPhone, just click here for the Screenr page.

We've mentioned it before (via Laurie and Scott's posts back in ought-six) but it's worth a Friday Favorite: if you're looking for a free, cross-platform tool that does one thing to audio and does it very very well, you need to download The Levelator today.

The Levelator is offered by The Conversations Network as a single-purpose tool: it takes uncompressed audio (WAV or AIFF files) and performs a small miracle. The file is leveled to a uniform loudness level, even if varying parts are recorded with different microphones, audio settings, or even in diverse corners of the world (if you've ever tried to record a podcast over Skype, you know what I'm talking about). While many audio apps have normalization or 'leveling' functions, in my admittedly amateur audio experience I haven't heard anything like The Levelator; those with more savvy in this area tell me that the output is akin to what you would get with a human engineer 'riding the meters' to adjust the sound dynamically as it varies.

The really nice thing about The Levelator -- and this is an odd thing to say about a Mac application -- is that it has, for all practical purposes, no controls. Drop a file on it, wait an appropriate amount of time and watch the blinking lights, then take your output file and continue on your merry way; the final file will simply sound way better than the original did. It's made my life much easier in editing the TUAW Talkcast, and if you have any hand in producing spoken-word audio it might do the same for you.

The Levelator is a free 48 MB Universal Binary download, and will work on either 10.4 or 10.5, as well as Windows and Linux. Enjoy!

Humble Daisy's ProfCast is a well-respected tool for turning PowerPoint and Keynote slideshows into podcasts, among many other features (including the ability to record live presentations). The software was recently updated to version 2.3.0 and if you haven't been motivated to try it before, it is definitely worth a look now.

Humble Daisy is currently offering the software for 75% off its retail price from today until January 24 to celebrate the Mac's 25th birthday. ProfCast normally retails for $59.95USD, and education discounts are available, but the sale brings the price down to $14.99. ProfCast requires OS X 10.4 and later.

And for the confused, myself included, ProfCast's Web site does say that the discount is for 25% off rather than 75%. However, by clicking on the coupon for a single-seat license, you can see that the price really is $14.99.

Educators and professionals who need to record and podcast lectures often turn to Humble Daisy's ProfCast, a tool for adding enhancements to PowerPoint or Keynote slideshows to create powerful podcasts.

ProfCast today received a major update to version 2.3. The original app allows recording of live presentations, syncing slides with an audio track, and full RSS feed generation and publishing support. The new version incorporates several improvements, the most significant being support for PowerPoint 2008.

The app now automatically detects whether Keynote or PowerPoint is being used for a presentation, and then begins the process of recording and publishing the lecture with all slide timing and voice narration.

Humble Daisy also killed a number of bugs from the previous version of ProfCast, and version 2.3.0 is a free upgrade to existing owners of the application. The program is $59.95 for first-time buyers, and educational discounts are available. ProfCast can be purchased from the online store.

A few months ago, I started recording a podcast with some friends. At that time, our process was to gather everyone into one Skype call and record the session with WireTap Studio. That worked reasonably well, but there were a few problems.

The quality of the end result was dependent on everyone's Skype connection. Throw in a bad rainstorm, a large download or an iffy wi-fi connection and quality suffered. The other issue was people talking over each other. Even the most disciplined podcasters do it occasionally. Since the raw audio was a single track, editing the overtalking out of the final show was difficult, if not impossible.

A few episodes into it, we read Dan Benjamin's tips on recording a podcast with participants in multiple locations. He and John Gruber use a time-tested method called a "double-ender" when recording The Talk Show. As they talk via Skype, John and Dan record their own audio locally, and those two files are edited together as separate tracks. We've adopted a similar method using GarageBand, and it's been working wonderfully. Read on for details on our setup.

We had a little teaser for BoinxTV during WWDC this summer. If you missed it, it's a joint project between Boinx Software and The Coding Monkeys, aimed at smaller producers of video (video podcasters, school TV shows, anyone who doesn't have their own production studio ... ), with the goal of improving presentation and removing the need for any post-production.

BoinxTV 1.0 was released today after months of beta testing and nightly builds. It's stable, powerful and, most of all, fun. The easy-to-use system of layers, (which can consist of on-screen graphics, video sources, lower thirds, etc.) allows for simple setup and easy, live production of professional-quality video presentations. There are over 30 available layer types, all customizable, and custom layers can be created with Apple's Quartz Composer software (free with OS X). BoinxTV includes professional-grade chroma-keying which, with a decent green screen and lighting setup, makes transporting yourself or your cast to exotic locations a breeze.

The software is targeted at video producers who could benefit from losing the tedium of post-production. If you have an existing production setup and demand finite control, you'll probably want to stick with what you have. For educational institutions, video podcasters and anyone who needs a rapid transition from recording to publication, though, it's an ideal solution.

BoinxTV retails at $499. If your needs don't justify that kind of hefty price tag, a "sponsored" version is available for $199. The only requirement for using that version is that every production must credit BoinxTV. Not a bad tradeoff, really. A free demo is available, and the software is available for purchase today. Visit the BoinxTV page for more information.

Take Control Books has just published the second edition of Andy Affleck's popular Take Control of Podcasting on the Mac ebook. Anyone interested in getting started with podcasting or improving the quality of their current podcasts should read this ebook.

Take Control of Podcasting on the Mac: Second Edition adds coverage of two widely-used Mac podcasting applications, WireTap Studio and Übercaster, with information on recording and editing podcasts with these two apps. Andy also updated the ebook to discuss podcasting with GarageBand 4, and dropped his coverage of Audacity as a podcasting tool. Want to hear how good your podcasts can sound? Listen to Andy's promo.

As with all Take Control titles, the $10 ebook will be updated regularly and is available for immediate download from the Take Control website. The ebook includes a coupon code good for up to $14 off the price of Rogue Amoeba's Audio Hijack Pro and Fission, so if you're in the market for both of those products you essentially get the ebook for free.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have written two Take Control ebooks.

Feeder 1.5, a venerable champion in the area of RSS and podcast feed creation, editing and publishing just hit the scene with a host of improvements. In addition to an updated interface for Leopard, it improves on editing, video podcasting, enclosure redirects and more.

I'm pretty excited about the fact that Feeder's Sparkle support has been updated to automatically generate MD5 sums and DSA signatures, as well as handle password-less SFTP. If that's not your thing, you can get your RSS kicks in the improved template editor and support for the Media RSS extension that allows the inclusion of thumbnails in search engines and programs like Miro. And, in keeping with the times, the improved performance in tagging MP4 files will help anyone publishing for iPod, iPhone or Apple TV.

Feeder has a 15 day free trial and costs $29 to register. Version 1.5 is a free upgrade for all 1.x users. Check it out at Reinvented Software.

Realmac Software today released v3.6.2 of RapidWeaver, their popular WYSIWYG tool for creating websites, podcasts, blogs and more. Among the new features of this version are:

• Aperture Support in the iMedia Browser
• Dynamic PHP Sidebar option for the blog plugin
• Sidebar is now a fully features styled text area
• The link panel now supports linking to tags and categories from Blogs

Also included in their blog post announcing this update is a PDF manual for the new version and an all-new Help Desk area with links to tutorial videos, manuals, FAQs and more.

A demo of RapidWeaver is available, while full licenses costs $49.00 and upgrades from versions previous to 3.6.x are $25.

It's been a while since we've written about Übercaster, the all-in-one tool for recording, editing and publishing podcasts, but that doesn't mean its developer, Eberhard Rensch, hasn't been hard at work on it. Through updates over the last couple of months, Übercaster v1.1.5 has gained a ton of handy new features and polish, such as:

• Delete and Close Gap: Instantly re-join two pieces of a track after cutting out a portion of the middle. A big time saver when editing out the false starts and other mistakes.
• Reset Playhead on Stop: An option to automatically return the playhead to its original starting point. Another huge timesaver when reviewing a specific clip.
• Split All Tracks: Splits every track at the playhead, regardless of which tracks are selection.
• New PleasantConnect version: An update to the Mac OS X kernel extension included with Übercaster that allows for pulling off tricks like recording Skype conversations in separate tracks, with you on one and any caller(s) on another.
• New progress bar in Dock icon: This is great for a real-time yet unobtrusive display of a podcast's upload progress.
• Sparkle integration for automatic updates: Andy Matuschak's popular Sparkle framework has made to Übercaster, providing wonderful automatic software updates that so many apps are enjoying.

This isn't all though; there are far more new features and bug fixes listed in just the last two updates than I can fit in this post, so check out the Übercaster changelog or grab the latest version yourself. If that updated kernel extension can fix my problems and allow me to record multi-track Skype conversations, Rensch will certainly be seeing a $79.95 purchase from me.

We here at TUAW have no qualms about our 'unofficialness.' It is what makes us all so cool (we're cool, right? Right?!). Our very own podcast is full of wit, wisdom, and helpful tips that make using a Mac even more pleasant. There is a new podcast in town, though, and this one is very official indeed.

That's right, Apple, Inc is serving up a video podcast called 'Apple Quick Tip of the Week.' At the moment 3 episodes are up, though the podcast is lacking album art (what up with that?). The podcast is hosted by Joy (to the right) and Anthony and judging by the soft, soft light it is filmed in I can only assume it is shot on location at the Apple Store in Heaven.

Thanks, Chad.

We last mentioned Übercaster several months ago, and now the German-made all-in-one podcast producing tool is finally shipping. Übercaster is designed to replace a variety of different applications, allowing you to produce, record, and edit your podcast all in one interface. You're able to set up a variety of clips (e.g. intro and exit music), clips, sound effects, etc., which you can invoke with one-click as you're talking. It even allows recording audio directly from iChat, Skype, and Gizmo Project. Once you've laid down your tracks, it allows you to edit them in a multi-track editing environment. I played with the beta while back and was impressed with the Mac-like nature of the program, though I did notice it sometimes does not gracefully handle large audio files dropped into it.

Unfortunately, all of this podcasting goodness does not come cheap. Übercaster is $79.95 and a demo is available.

[Via Macworld UK]