podcasting?

[viceroy]

So what is the deal with podcasting. I mean, I understand the whole concept, but is there really any interesting podcast's out there?

I have been looking for a bit, and there is nothing but ordinary people talking about their day...why the hell would someone want to listen to this?

For instance, are there any good podcasts about...say...the wmc and who's playing where...or new releases?

Thanks,
Steve

[In-SighT]

what the hell is a podcast?

[viceroy]

What is a Podcast?

A podcast is an audio mini-program, in MP3 format, broadcast over the Internet. You can download and listen to the podcast on any MP3-compatible digital music player, preferably an iPod, hence the name. The key innovation is that subscribers can subscribe to lists of MP3 podcasts and choose when to download them, taking their recorded shows on commutes, treadmills or flights, unlike traditional Internet radio, where music or other audio content is streamed at particular times and is not always made available for free. You can either download a podcast once or subscribe to the RSS service for regular doses of your favorite shows. Your podcasting software checks for new content and begins to download when you say so. Ideally, you connect your iPod to your computer and have it automatically sync the latest feeds via iTunes.

The beauty of podcasting is that it?s easy and generally free for listeners, while costing relatively little to producers. At least, this is true for listeners with unlimited broadband Internet access and large hard disks, since a 30-minute feed can mean a 20-Megabyte download. This means that podcasters also have to host large files. But podcasting means you, the listener, are your own radio program director: you can decide when, where, and how often to listen to an audio program.

How Podcasting Started

Podcasting is the brainchild of Adam Curry and David Winer. Curry, formerly of MTV Music Television fame, last year wrote iPodder software that could organize and download to his iPod newly posted audio files from websites of his choice. He encouraged others to improve on his coding, and volunteers from all over the world subsequently helped him perfect iPodder. He started his own half-hour podcast in the fall, ?Daily Source Code,? featuring talk on new and interesting podcasts, tech news, and general chit-chat, with small bits of music in-between, and has attracted some 50,000 listeners.

Podcasting is a natural extension of the blogging phenomenon, which has continued to grow over the past few years. Many podcasters start out as bloggers, only to expand their platform further to the audio blog.

Listening to a podcast for the first time from the author of a blog you?ve been following religiously for months can be an almost surreal experience: suddenly you can match a voice to the name. This is how people must have felt when they first heard the voices of beloved actors after the silent movie era came to an end.

What You Need

What do you need to hear one of these audiocasts? All you need is a podcast software client that will download the feed via your Internet connection. Conveniently, there are multi-platform podcasting applications such as iPodder, which is Windows-, Mac-, and Linux-friendly. At the moment, Windows-only apps include NIMIQ, podfeeder, and Doppler, whereas on a Mac you can choose between iPoddumFeeder, PlayPod, and iPodderX.

Podcasters themselves also have it pretty easy. All they need is something to talk about, a microphone, a computer and some editing software. Upload it to the Internet and voila. Sounds easy, right?

Well, it does get a tad technical. In fact, many podcasters want to know how to get top audio quality, the right microphone to buy, how to use editing and MP3 conversion software to erase errant sounds, and how to get an RSS feed onto their blogs. Some have it easy. Most traditional blogging tools already automatically generate RSS files. Others have to do this themselves.

[Civic_Zen]

Interesting, will have to look into this. Then I'll let you know if I find any good ones.

[ZendoBro]

Re: podcasting?

Finally! It would be cool though if you could type in the URL of your favorite internation station to tune in.

[Pataky P]

Many thanks the info!! :wink:

[dvs]

thanks !!! sounds interesting, i'll have to check it out...

[rewing3]

That sounds cool but are there a lot of radio shows that do that. It would be cool if diggers kiss 100 show was like or the essential mix.

[nietzsche]

Anybody get daily email updates from a newspaper or CNN or some other outlet? That's kinda what podcasting is turning into. It's not just for music.

The idea is that you hook up your iPod to yur computer before you go to bed, and in the morning you've got somebody reading the news, sports, lifestyle, or whatever kind of content you request.

Thus instead of you ULing the content yourself, it will be "pushed" on to your iPod.