Podcasts have become audio and video versions of blogs. They are delivered by all types of hobbyists and professional organizations (usually news services) and delivered through a multiplicity of channels. Podcasts are audio or video “snippets” that address a particular topic or provide a small segment of entertainment or information.
YouTube and MySpace are loaded with millions of podcasts. Outside of the teen networking space, there are dozens of podcast streams that post new “bites” on a regular basis. If you’re interested in exploring this new wrinkle in the broadband universe, there are a couple of tools you’ll need to get things going, and several tools to help you find podcast feeds that might interest you.
The main tool for subscribing to a podcast channel is a podcast or news aggregator. There are dozens of them; many are free. Generally, a “newsfeed” is provided in RSS or Atom format; podcasts that are distributed are typically uploaded to a web server for distribution. Any web server will do, and there are many services that are dedicated solely to hosting podcasts. An RSS or Atom feed provides a URL for the subscription and new content is downloaded each time the feed is read by the aggregator and finds that it has been updated.
This is how new content from the source is delivered to your computer automatically, or at least at the intervals that your aggregator is configured to verify the source. An aggregator will automatically deliver a podcast from a subscription source that you have signed up for; generally, it will be saved on your local machine and played on your PC’s default media player.
You can find a list of aggregators and where to find them at: [http://www.podcastingnews.com/topics/Podcast_Software.html]. Once you have an aggregator in place, you can search for podcast services that might interest you on a regular basis. Like many computer subscription services, you may find yourself downloading a podcast on a particular day because the topic doesn’t interest you or you don’t have the time. But the idea is to find a collection of regular podcast feeds that provide information on topics that interest you, and absorb that information in audio or video format.
Once you have located a website that offers a podcast service, you will usually find a button that will make you a subscriber. Click on it and you will find regular downloads that appear in your aggregator, usually found on your desktop by its icon or by an orange RSS button. You can organize your podcasts into folders and watch or listen to them at will. If you binge on subscriptions and then neglect the daily set of material that is automatically downloaded, it will rack up megabytes quickly if many of those podcasts are of the video variety.
As with websites, podcast directories began to appear around the time podcasts became established as a mainstream Internet communication device. One of the oldest, largest, and best-organized podcast directories can be found at http://www.ipodder.org/. The site divides podcast sources by category and provides folders for you to browse. Ipodder is a commercial product, an aggregator, but its website can be very informative. If you’d like to review the podcast material from the A to Z of the site, you can find it in an online article at [http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0], 1697.1817856.00.asp.
Podcast Alley has a directory that provides good details on each podcast it lists. It also provides a section on podcast software and some recent high-profile podcasts for a casual click. Visit the site at podcastalley.com/. Other directories include [http://www.podcast.net/] and of course the dynamic duo: http://www.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Podcasts/Directories/; and podcasts.yahoo.com/.