You have probably heard about RSS, a standard that allows people to subscribe to receive the articles of sites they like in a special program called RSS aggregator (very similar to your subscription to a newspaper, where once you've subscribed you start receiving at home all the issues of newspapers you're interested in). Podcasting takes this one step further. Instead of you subscribing to written articles you subscribe to audio or even video files and you receive them in a special program (such as iTunes). In other words, a podcast is a collection of audio (or video) files that someone uploads at a certain web address. When you subscribe to a certain podcast all the existing files are downloaded to your computer (by the special program mentioned above). Not only that but whenever a new file is uploaded it is also downloaded to your computer for your hearing pleasure.

In case you are wondering where the name comes from, it's a combination of the words "pod" (coming from iPod) and "cast" (coming from broadcast).

Podcasting has many uses in may domains. They can be used as a publicity means (for example Pixar has advertised its release of Cars with a video podcast).They are very useful when it comes to education as many resources are shared on the net for students (including some courses they might have missed). There are a lot of podcasts to help people learn different languages. There are also podcasts of different books, made for giving visually impaired people an alternative. You can find some official and unofficial audio tours of cities or museums published as podcasts. There is even a video podcast sharing the success stories of people in the Chicago Police Department.

If you think this technology is new and exciting and want to try it as soon as possible there are only a few steps you must do: find yourself one of those programs (called podcatchers or podcast aggregators) with podcast receiving capabilities, find a podcast you're interested in online, subscribe to it and sit back and wait for your "episodes" to download. Easy as that.

If you don't know where to find a podcast aggregator, go to this link (http://www.podcastingnews.com /topics/Podcast_Software.html) where you can find an extensive list.
If you need to find a podcast there are a lot of podcast catalogs on the Internet. For example you can try http://www.podcast.net/ or http://www.podcastcentral.com/ , but there are plenty others.

Learn more about this author, Andreea M..
Click here to send author comments or questions.

---

Add your voice

Know something about A guide to podcasting?
We want to hear your view. Write now!