Get iOS 4 and an iPhone 3GS or an iPhone 4

The first thing I like to point out is that to actually use the new multitasking features you need to update your device to iOS 4.0. Also multitasking is not available on older devices. You need to have an iPhone 3GS, a new iPhone 4 or an iPod Touch 3rd generation. The iPhone 3G can have the new iOS 4 as well, but you won’t be able to use the new multitasking features due to memory and performance constraints. We actually tested iOS 4 on an iPhone 3G and can not even advise to update since is awfully slow.

Listening to Radio in the Background

If you meet all the requirements above you should be able to get multitasking running smoothly. Start listening to radio and hit the Home button. Music will continue playing and Snowtape will even continue recording. Hit the Home button twice and you can fast-switch between apps. Do what ever you like to do and come back to Snowtape later to check what songs have been recorded and save them for permanent storage. If a phone call comes in Snowtape will automatically pause radio. If you then like to continue listening you need to switch to Snowtape and hit the continue button on the dialog that has been popped up. Same happens when you hit the remote control of the Fast-App-Switcher or on your iPhone head phones to start iPod playback.

Remote control Playback of Recordings

As you may know, Snowtape lets you define folders with your favorite recordings which can then be played back in a playlist. This now also works in the background. Play back your favorite music while you’re doing Twitter or playing your favorite game. In addition to background playback, Snowtape also let’s you remote control it with the Fast-App-Switcher remote control or with the buttons on you iPhone headset. It works just like the iPod app. You can even pause playback from within the lock screen.

We think that this new version of Snowtape will blow you away and finally makes listening to radio on your iPhone a no-brainer. Snowtape 1.2 is a free update and cost $1.99 to buy.

Follow us on Twitter. We'll send out promo codes over the next days.

More than 2300 Radio Stations

A lot of our customers wanted to listen to their local radio station. Obviously this was a demand we weren‘t able to foresee when we released version 1.0. So we limited the initial version to the most compatible and best radio stations we knew. However we now know that local radio stations are very important when it comes to listening radio at all. So we added all radio stations we currently have in our directory that use MP3 or AAC as their streaming format. Windows Media streams are not available at this time, but we are working on it.

Pimped Radio Directory

In addition to adding more and more radio stations, it was also necessary to give you more flexibility to browse the online directory to better find what you are looking for. So we added country lists, our Top 100 station list and a text search. Of cause not all radio stations are submitting title information, which is needed to automatically cut the recordings. Therefore we had to add an option to manually split a recording. You can do this by tapping on the small scissors icon in the right lower corner. And if you don‘t want to record at all, you can even disable it alltogether.

Manage your Favorites

Also a much requested feature was to mark a radio station as favorite. You can do this by tapping the star icon in the lower right corner of the radio view when listening to a radio station. Favorite radio stations are stored in a category called „Favorite stations“. You can also add your own radio station (assuming it‘s compatible with Snowtape) as a favorite by entering a URL to a stream or to a playlist file.

Update now and please give us a little hug in the App Store review section! More info on the new features here.

In the meantime we are shifting our focus again to the Mac version and releasing a public beta version today. We improved Windows Media playback and the overall responsiveness of the app. If you like to try, you need to enable beta releases inside the app. Here is how.

Please send us feedback about bugs and problems.

Note: SnowRemote 1.0.6 is not compatible anymore. You need to update to version 1.0.7 which is currently in App Store review.

Note: Make sure you backup your database and your original app before trying a beta release. Use at your own risk.

For now, we are simply happy to not have worked for the trash can. We hope that you are still loving our app and discover great music on the go!

UPDATE:
The winners of the big Snowtape announcement tweetblast are @Jakubat, @leafos1, @sdorok, @mjesusfan, @ziuu. They have been notified via Twitter direct message. Congratulations!

I am sorry to tell you that the release of Snowtape for iPhone has to be delayed for an unknown period. Tonight at 11 p.m. I got a call from Steve Rea of iPhone Developer Relations telling me that they can not approve Snowtape for iPhone. Effectively he said that Apple can not publish an app that records audio from an internet stream and store it permanently on the iPhone and of cause he explictly said that we can not have a function in our app for re-distribution of these recordings. What he meant is that Apple can not allow you folks to record internet radio and store it as MP3 on your local storage. Of course I tried to asked him about the paragraph in the iPhone Developer SDK agreement, we are violating. His sole words were, that there are lots of things missing in the SDK agreement and that they can not foresee any circumstance that leads to a denial of an app. That‘s right! We did not violate any paragraph of the SDK, yet they forbid us distributing our app.

After I hang up the phone I could not believe that there is no app in the App Store that can record internet radio and stores the audio for later playback. And of course I have found at least 3 apps that do exactly like this:

• FStream
• TuneIn Radio
• myRadios

So, is this another sad story about a great app that suffers from an unfair and arbitrary approval process? I hope not. After all we put 3 months of hard work into Snowtape for iPhone not to mention the days of work by our graphic designer and beta testers. I still hope that Apple will come around and really starts a discussion with us about what we can do to get Snowtape approved for sale.

Yours,
Martin

Winners will get the coupon code* via direct message. So make sure you also follow @vemedio.

*code only valid for the US-iTunes Store

If you have a fully licensed Snowtape you do not need to sign in anymore if you want to import radio stations to your local storage. Signing in for this is just a precausion on our site to prohibit fraud. No need for that if you are already a paying customer.

The Snowtape Online Directory now has longer lists (100 items compared to 20 before). This should improve the visibility of radio stations that are not in the Top 20. You can always click on the small list button in the top right corner of a list to show the full list of the corresponding box.

Many of you didn't know, but since version 1.5.4 you can import the Top 100 and all "Great for Recording" stations in a row. This has been made more obvious now with the small "arrow down" button.

Happy updating!