There is a whole world out there, just waiting to be listened to. Everything from news reports, personal messages, music compilations and poetry, to sporting tips, training techniques and technology lectures. Yup, what I'm referring to, are podcasts.
So, what's a podcast then...? Well, I guess you could say that it is a recording (usually audio, but could also be video) that is available for download, usually to a device like an iPod, for instant, or offline listening. The term podcast is derived from the process of "broadcasting" to "iPods". The difference between a podcast, and any other download though, is that podcasts are usually subscribed to, and the latest content is then delivered to you.
Podcasting has been around for about 2 years now, but South Africans have been quite oblivious to the technology, largely because of the lack of a decent broadband offering. With the explosion of ADSL over the past year or so in SA, podcasting is gaining popularity - so much so that I now read that Tony Leon will be adding podcasting to his list of "campaign tactics", and that Derek The Bandit has also resorted to providing one show a month, via podcast. Check it out here, its pretty good actually.
So anyway, I've found quite a couple of decent podcast sites and resources, so here are a couple, if you're interested in listening:
- no iPod required : an introduction to podcasting
- www.podcast.net : the ultimate podcast directory site, literally hundreds of thousands of recordings.
- MTBcast.com : Mountain biking news
- Active.com : Sporting/Training tips and interviews
- SoundRepublic : DTB's site
- The Onion Radio News : List of "The Onion News" podcasts on podcast.net. One that is worth listening to is - "President Bush Escapes From Weekly Bath"
Oh, also found this interesting snippet on the popularity of podcasting in Wikipedia:
The word about podcasting rapidly spread through the already-popular weblogs of Curry, Winer and other early podcasters and podcast-listeners. Fellow blogger and technology columnist Doc Searls began keeping track of how many "hits" Google found for the word "podcasts" on September 28, 2004. On that day, the result was 24 hits. There were 526 hits on September 30, then 2,750 three days later. The number doubled every few days, passing 100,000 by October 18. A year later, Google found more than 100,000,000 hits on the word "podcasts."
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What's a podcast? Wikipedia.org has the best definition, and here's my opinion as well: There's been some confusion about podcasting, and rightly so. The term "podcast" is where the confusion starts. Some people think it's a live feed broadcast, but it's not. It's simply a subscription based service that can download media to you automatically from content providers. So what's all the hype? Well, there's money to be made, so expect some hype. Sure you can get some great, free podcasts, just remember it's not your only choice. If you prefer to download and/or record your media manually, then you may not find podcast technology all that great. So, as commercial ventures saturate the podcast landscape, the term "podcast" could be called more appropriately, a "payload"...
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