Podcast

I'm on a listserv called grassroots radio conference. Why? I don't have a radio show, but I went to one of their conferences and I'm interested in the media. Truthfully I end up erasing most of the emails but one thread caught my attention. It was about the term "podcast" which was a mystery to the person who started the thread, Sandy, and to me. I've heard the term a lot. Some of my favorite radio shows talk about their podcasts. I gathered it's a way to download radio shows to some audio device so you can listen to it whenever you want. I also gathered that it sometimes costs money. So I followed the thread where people tried to explain the term to Sandy.

Paul said that if your portable audio gizmo was connected to the internet via your computer and you were subscribed to the podcast, then you could have the latest episode of the show to listen to wherever and whenever you wanted. It sounded to me like a recording of the radio show you subscribed to was transferred automatically and magically to your listening device or computer for every episode somehow.

Bryan explained that you didn't need iTunes to obtain podcasts. He said there were commercial and open source choices. He said podcasts are another great way to distribute and receive programming besides radio airwaves.

Paul said it's simple to try podcasting even if you don't understand how it works. He said you install iTunes, click the podcast button, find the show and click on that. He also said that a "podcast is transferred to your computer as a file." And that a file is a "disbursement of digital media."

Sandy weighed in again saying she still found the whole thing incomprehensible and a hassle and wouldn't sign up for podcasts even if she wanted to hear the shows. In response, Jan emailed saying that she thought podcasting was easy and important to people on the radio listserv because more and more people have iTunes on their computers and are using them to access podcasts. She said it doesn't matter whether people are listening on the airwaves or "in bits that travel mysteriously across the internet," they are listening. And Jan pointed out that you can take your audio device and listen to the broadcast anywhere. She prefers the hammock in her backyard. It beats sitting in front of her computer streaming whatever.

After reading this thread, I still felt confused about what podcasting is. Maybe you have to just do it and experience it I thought. I checked it out in Wikipedia to see if that would clear things up. I learned that a "podcast is a series of audio or digital-media files which is distributed over the internet by syndicated download, through Web feeds, to portable media players and personal computers." The thing that makes podcasts different from streaming or direct downloading is that if you subscribe, a podcast can be downloaded automatically whenever there is new content. To me it sounded a little like when you have an RSS feed that brings blog entries automatically to your attention on your computer.

Wikipedia also informed me that the term comes from the words "iPod" and "broadcast." The Apple iPod was the type of portable media player that the first podcasting scripts were developed for. These "scripts allow podcasts to be automatically transferred from a personal computer to a mobile device after they are downloaded." Now that there are many other types of devices able to receive these podcasts than just the iPod, POD has come to be redefined as "Personal On Demand."

I also learned from Wikipedia that podcasts are being used more and more in education for teachers and students to share information, for absent students to catch up, and for teachers to share assignments and information with parents and the community. Museums, businesses and police departments are also using podcasts to distribute information.

I guess I'll have to grab a teenager at work to show me how to podcast. I wonder if I'll finally get to use that MP3 player on my cell phone.