Well, I'm not ready to start packaging audio data into containers just yet. But I'll go ahead and see if I can add Vorbis to the list of encodings for Orecchiette.
Well, that would make sense, if I were using the command line to construct the GStreamer pipeline. However, by constructing and managing the plugins directly, Orecchiette has much better control over them. (Thus the ease with which it can pause, stop, or otherwise modify running pipelines And honestly, I figure if a user knows enough about GStreamer plugins to specify a slew of advanced options, they're probably able to construct a custom pipeline for themselves... But in any case, I'll take a look at EAC and see if I can steal any of their ideas.
Technically, if you're in a videocall with someone, sure. But I'm not entirely sure it would be a good idea on the N900. I was just recording another phone call a few minutes ago, and was surprised at just how warm my phone got during the call; the CPU was probably running all-out just to encode the audio data. I'd hate to see just how much pressure you'd place on the phone by trying to encode video as well. (I guess you could just store it raw, but you'd probably run out of space very quickly that way...)