Podcasting Part 1

Have you heard about podcasting? It's likely you have, if you spend much time online, even if you don't quite remember what it's all about. The term (about a year old now) is a bit of a recent buzz word and has been cropping up more and more lately.

Podcasts are audio files, most often in the form of MP3, delivered to the user's computer via special RSS feeds which use enclosures (basically the same idea as email attachments). That's where the big deal of podcasting is—in their delivery. Using specialized aggregator software, these audio files are automatically downloaded to the listener's computer (and subsequently, a portable mp3 player) for listening at a later time. You subscribe to these feeds like you would an XML feed of someone's blog or of a news website, and instead of being delivered and experienced in realtime (such as a streaming broadcast, for example), they are downloaded and saved for listening at your convenience. Though the technology for podcasting is obviously much different, the end result is akin to what a Tivo does for video.

I won't get into the specifics of the technology at work here. You can read more about enclosures and the RSS 2.0 format elsewhere. I'd rather talk about the bigger picture.

As I mentioned earlier, the cool part of podcasting is in its delivery. That's what distinguishes it from the Internet broadcasting you are used to. Rather than streaming content (which we all know is often low quality and glitchy without a super fast connection), podcasting captilizes on the always-on-ness of broadband Internet access. Instead of clicking a link and waiting for it to queue up into a buffer and/or having to suffer through the often jumpy experience of streaming media, podcasts are downloaded when you are away from you computer, when your bandwidth is just going unused. The speed of delivery then becomes relatively unimportant. The aggregator software checks for new podcasts and downloads them when you are away. When you return, you have the entire file sitting locally on your computer ready to go. Sure, you could find a way to do this manually, but the magic comes in the elegance of the system.

The more I read about this stuff, the easier it is to see how podcasting fits into this bigger picture of emerging media technology. It's completely in line with the whole on-demand idea we're seeing in digital cable television and ever-increasing prevalence of DVRs. I think pretty much everything is going to move in that direction sooner or later.

Well, as you can see, this is hardly a comprehensive discussion. I suggest you check out the following links if you'd like to read more about podcasting and the ever-growing number of podcasts currently online.

In Part 2 of this post: A brief look at some of the more popular podcasts and my selfish reasons for caring about podcasting.

Podcasting Resources:

• ipodder.org - maintained by Adam Curry (yes, the former MTV VJ), co-creator of podcasting. Good info on the history and background of the phenomenon, as well as podcast listings and resources.
  
• Wikipedia entry - a decent overview of podcasting.
  
• iPodder 1.1 - one of the aforementioned aggregator programs used to get podcasts. Open source.
  
• PodcastAlley.com - a comprehensive site with podcast listings, reviews, links to relevant software, and user forums.
  
• audio.weblogs.com - the latest 100 podcasts.
  
• 'Podcasting' Lets Masses Do Radio Shows - a recent AP article on Yahoo News.
  
• howtopodcast.org - read how you can create your own podcasts.