Podcasts have become audio and video versions of blogs. They are delivered by all kinds of amateur and professional organizations (usually news services) and are delivered through a multiplicity of channels. Podcasts are audio or video “bites” that address a particular topic or provide a short segment of entertainment or information.
YouTube and MySpace are packed with millions of podcasts. Outside of the teen networking space, there are dozens of podcast sources posting 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 it all up and running, and several tools to help you find podcast sources that might interest you.
The main tool for subscribing to a podcast feed is a podcast or news aggregator. There are dozens of them; many are free. A “news feed” is usually provided in RSS or Atom format; podcasts that are syndicated are usually uploaded to a web server for delivery. Any web host will do, and there are plenty of services that are dedicated solely to hosting podcasts. An RSS or Atom feed provides a URL for subscription, and new content is downloaded each time the aggregator reads the feed and finds that it has been updated.
This is how new content from the feed is automatically delivered to your computer, or at least at the intervals your aggregator is set to check the feed for. An aggregator will automatically deliver a podcast from a subscription source you have signed up for; it will usually be saved to your local machine and played in 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, you can search for podcast services that might interest you on a regular basis. Like many computer subscription services, you may download a podcast on a particular day because you’re not interested in the topic or don’t have 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’ve located a website that offers a podcast service, you’ll usually find a button that will make you a subscriber. Click on it and you’ll find regular downloads appearing on 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-subscribe and then neglect the daily addition of auto-downloaded material, you’ll be racking 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 breaks down podcast sources by category and provides folders for you to explore. Ipodder is a commercial product, an aggregator, but its website can be very informative. If you want to review the podcast material from A to Z on the site, you can find it in an article online at [http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0],1697,1817856,00.asp.
Podcast Alley has a directory that gives good details about 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/.