My 'techie' readers will know what a Podcast is, and probably be listening to them already. I have known about the technology for a while, but only recently started listening to 'podcasts'. Below is a quick tutorial on what it's all about:
Equipment needed to listen to a podcast
1)first you need a computer connected to the internet, preferably at a decent speed
2)then you need an iPod or one of the inferior, copycat devices, which can play back digital music, particularly in mp3 format.
3)finally, you need to install a piece of 'podcasting' software on your computer. Somthing like iPodder is good.
What you then do is set up the software to download 'podcasts' at regular intervals to your computer. Using iTunes or other inferior software, you can then copy the downloaded shows to your iPod or MP3 player.
Basically, a podcast is like a radio broadcast. The major difference is that the listener can choose when they want to listen to the show. They do not need to listen to a radio at a specific time, nor even be connected to the internet. Download the show you want from the internet, pop it on your iPod, and listen to it on the train/bus/plane or whenever you feel like it (although I wouldn't recommend listening in the bath).
There are a couple of reasons why I just recently started podcasting. The first, and major one, is that a lot of the people actually creating these shows a few months ago were techie folks, a bit geeky, and there wasn't much content that I fancied listening to.
Podcasting has now gone 'mainstream', and both Radio 4 and Virgin Radio in the UK are making certain shows available to download. The Virgin show is a bit disappointing - removing music and news fromthe Breakfast show just leaves a shell of emptry chatter, in my opinion. The Radio 4 show is better, with whole episodes of In Our Time now available to download.
If other iPod owners are anything like me, they will have also eventually got bored of listening to the songs on their iPods (even if you can fit you whole collection on the things), so spicing it up with the odd free radio show is just the thing.
Do you have some links mate? cheers
Posted by: Dirk at March 18, 2005 09:20 PM