Podcasting: Blogs for Your Ears
By C. David Gammel, CAE
Originally published in Executive Update.
Have you finally figured out what weblogs are and why they have become so popular? Excellent! Now get ready for a new variant that is hitting the scene: podcasting.
Podcasting is, in essence, a weblog where the content is an audio recording rather than text. The podcasts are posted to the web by the author in formats that can be played by most common audio players. The author of a podcast will also publish an RSS feed that listeners can subscribe to in order to automatically download the latest podcasts into their favorite portable digital music player. Many podcasts listeners will grab a fresh batch of podcasts for their iPod in the morning and listen to them on their commute.
Podcasting gets part of its name from Apple’s iPod, one of the most popular portable music players on the market. The other part of the name is from broadcasting. The combo indicates how podcasting is an audio program, like radio, but that is ‘casted’ via RSS subscriptions via the Internet rather than over the airwaves. The other key difference is that it can be listened to later by anyone who downloads it rather than at the same moment the author records it (such as you have to do with radio broadcasts).
While many podcasts do feature music (showing it’s radio roots) there are a growing number of casts that feature discussion and interviews on a wide range of topics, from business to politics to you-name-it. iPodder provides a great directory of podcasts, sorted by topic category. The Wikipedia entry on podcasting has a great overview and provides numerous links to resources, software and how-tos on Podcasting.
Happy listening and casting!
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