The first thing that happens when I tell people I’m a podcaster is I’m bombarded with questions. How long have you been doing it? What do you podcast about? How did you get started? Who do you podcast for? A long conversation ensues, which is often followed by a brief and awkward silence. Finally, they’ll summon a little courage and ask the question that’s been lingering all along: “Um… what is podcasting?”

What is Podcasting?

Basically a podcast is just a radio show you can download. Music, news, interviews, or just a recording of you and your friends having a conversation – if you can hear it, you can podcast it.

Podcasts usually come in the form of compressed audio files, like MP3s, so you can listen to them on your digital music player or your computer. (Of course, all of this is changing very rapidly, but we’ll get to that later).

Here’s a sample of a CBC Radio 3 podcast which focuses on emerging Canadian music:

A unique feature of podcasts is that users can “subscribe” to them with special podcasting software (like iTunes), which allows podcast “episodes” to be downloaded to your computer automatically. Another option is to just surf the web and listen to whichever podcasts pique your interest, but that gets to be a lot of work. It’s much easier to enjoy podcasts using podcasting software.

Here are a few podcast players to get you started:

RSS (Really Simple Syndication)

Listeners subscribe to podcasts using RSS. An RSS file or “feed” is a type of XML (eXtensible Mark-up Language) document that lists all the current episodes of a given podcast. Whenever a new podcast is made, that podcast’s RSS feed must also be updated. This is how the podcasting software “knows” when to download the new episodes.

Feedburner (http://www.feedburner.com) and FeedForAll (http://www.feedforall.com) are easy-to-use third-party services that will publish RSS feeds for you. But, if your company likes to keep everything in-house, here’s a great video tutorial that will show you how to update your own RSS files.
(http://www.creativecow.net/articles/mcmahon_frank/pod2/pod2.html)

Word of the year - Why is Podcasting so popular all of a sudden?

Like the blogging phenomenon, and the Internet itself, podcasts have rapidly become the darling of the mainstream media. In 2005, the New American Oxford Dictionary declared “podcast” to be the word of the year and a recent survey found that over 27 million Americans have already listened to podcasts. There are now more podcasts than there are radio stations in the world.

There are many reasons for the mass appeal of podcasts, but here are just a few:

First of all, they’re free. With very few exceptions, podcasters do not charge a fee to their audiences.

Secondly, they’re portable. Audiences are no longer tied to their desks and computers while they consume media. The popularity of portable media players like the iPod, have liberated audiences from their offices and bedrooms. Current statistics show that over half of teenagers today own a digital audio device and over half of them listen to podcasts.

Thirdly, they’re made by us. Podcasts are part of a massive shift in the media towards “citizen journalism.” Corporate broadcasters are now competing with the kid next door. If you think that competition is good for the market, then podcasts are great for business.

So, why should companies get involved?