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This video by Lee LeFever at CommonCraft.com explains what podcasting is in plain english.
- A computer, either a PC or a Mac.
-- Windows XP preferred on PCs, or Linux; OS X for a Mac.
-- A program for listening to MP3 audio files.
- An internet connection. Cable or DSL preferred.
- Podcatching or news reader software.
- A portable player (like an iPod) is not necessary, but handy.
There are many different programs for podcatching, for both computers. Personally, I use NewsGator, which is a free website (http://www.newsgator.com) that also requires a program called FeedDemon which downloads your queued audio files. Newsgator lets you subscribe to RSS feeds, whether straight text or podcasts, and organizes them all for you.
If any podcasts have new episodes, Newsgator and FeedDemon do not automatically download the files for you. You have to mark the audio files you want. FeedDemon will then automatically download the ones you marked. I prefer this intermediate step because I subscribe to so many feeds; news, blogs, and podcasts of many kinds. If it downloaded every new audio file without me selecting, I would drown in digital discourse.
There are many other web-based readers out there, most of them are setup for podcasts, like Odeo.com. Even AOL and Yahoo have podcast channel sites. These also let you listen online.
However, if you want a program that will download all audio from all feeds you subscribe to, there are a lot to choose from. None however are as flexible and easy to use as iTunes. No, you don't have to have an iPod or even a Mac to use iTunes. There is a Windows version for download. It will also update playlists for any music player you prefer to use. For set-it-and-forget-it ease of use, iTunes is the best and it's free.
Podcasting became a big craze in 2005, but most people believe this is more than a passing fad.
A "podcast" as it is today did not exist until about September of 2004. This is when various technologies came together for the first time to allow automatic delivery of syndicated audio content on the internet.
Instead of streamed audio that can be found on many internet radio stations, like SecondShifters.com, podcasting allows for the automatic download of whole MP3 audio files via a sub-scription.
It started as web journalers (aka bloggers) found ways to distribute their journals and put audio in them. This is known as audioblogging.
The internet is not just a text based place. Audio and video are as key to information as text is. So it did not take long before people were placing graphics, speech, music, and video on their blogs. Thus audioblogging and videoblogging (aka vlogging) were born.
When "real simple syndication" (RSS) was added to the programs that made blogging possible, it meant anyone could subscribe to a blog that caught their fancy. A news reader or aggregator program is all that is needed to subscribe to these syndicated feeds.
Dave Winer added the idea of "enclosures" to RSS. This added the ability to know exactly where an audio or video file could be found and downloaded from. As soon as news aggregators were programmed to automatically download the enclosed files and save them on the reader's computer, or perhaps to a portable media player, podcasting was born.
Adam Curry is credited with being one of the first to marry all of the technologies together. He had an audio blog and wanted a way to get the sound files directly onto his iPod player. He wrote a script to do this from his RSS feed and started a revolution. He's also credited with coining the term "podcast" as a hybrid of iPod and broadcast.
However, though iPods are the hip trend in media players, you do not need to have an iPod to listen to a podcast. Most podcasts are MP3 audio files, so as long as your computer can play MP3, or if you have any type of portable MP3 player, you can listen to a podcast. In fact, you don't even need a news aggregator, nor do you need iTunes. These programs, often called "podcatchers", just make getting podcasts easier.
Today, a podcast can be created many different ways. From the deepest magicks of low level XML file creation to the highest level of upload-and-go. This series won't cover them all, but I will touch on some popular methods in the next issue.
Moreover, people are making podcasts about anything. There are podcasts covering news, talk, music, technology, comedy, audio books, storytelling, and every type of hobby. There are many reasons for this, just as there are many types of blogs. As more people learn about podcasting, it will become more diverse and even easier to subscribe.