What is Podcasting?
Podcasting is the new radio. A podcaster publishes podcasts
to the Internet so that others can listen to them. This
means podcasts do not rely on radio waves or line of sight
broadcasting; rather, podcasting is a worldwide production.
As long as one has the internet, one can listen to these
audio programs. Likewise, with a little more, one can publish
these so that others can listen to them.
How do I listen to Podcasts?
In its most basic form, a Podcast is an mp3 file, the
standard audio file that you can download from the internet.
Major Podcasting groups have subscriptions available for
podcasts, and with podcast downloading software, you can
download your podcasts and transfer them to your iPod,
or any other mp3 player. What a podcast player does is
simply retrieve these files from the internet so that you
can transfer them to your mp3 player. Software like iTunes,
iGadget, NewzCrawler, and many more will download RSS and
Atom files, the files that Podcasts are saved as, so that
they are ready to be transferred to your iPod. Basically,
you just have to find a podcast you want, download it and
transfer it to your iPod or mp3 player.
How do I produce Podcasts?
There are 3 basic steps to creating a podcast.
- Create the audio file.
- Publish the audio file.
- Format the audio file into an RSS feed.
The first step, creating the audio file, involves recording
yourself or an interview or whatever you may want, editing
the sound file, and then converting it to an mp3. The
second step is just to publish this file to your online
web space, which many companies provide for free, such
as blogging companies or free web site hosts. The last
step takes that file that you uploaded to the internet,
and it formats it so that podcasting software recognizes
it as a podcast and downloads it to a user’s computer.
That’s it in a nutshell. There are many different
ways that you can go about doing each of these steps. So,
here are some links to help you out, each offering more
information.
References
WikiBook on Podcasting: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Podcasting
Basic information on creating a podcast can be found
here.
Digital Podcasting Guide:
http://www.digitalpodcast.com/podcastnews/2006/05/19/five-steps-to-free-podcasting/
This site gives detailed information on the processes
it takes to create and publish a podcast.
Engadget Podcast:
http://www.engadget.com/2004/10/05/engadget-podcast-001-10-05-2004-how-to-podcasting-get/
This site offers basic instructions on how to listen
to podcasts and publish them, as well.
Podcasting News Software Lists:
List of Podcasting Publishing software:
http://www.podcastingnews.com/topics/Podcasting_Software.html
List of Podcasting Listening software:
http://www.podcastingnews.com/topics/Podcast_Software.htm |
