Podcasting is a new format for distributing audio and
video content over the Internet. From the technical viewpoint,
podcasting involves nothing new – it’s just embedding of
multimedia-content (audio or video) into an RSS feed.
It is not difficult to create a
podcast. There are both specialized web services and desktop
applications for the task. Structurally, a podcast is an RSS file that
contains links to enclosure files. Apple has developed iTunes – an RSS
extension for use with podcasts. iTunes significantly improves upon the
capabilities of RSS by providing additional fields (such as keywords,
duration etc.) for use in describing enclosures.
The most popular way of getting
audio files for podcasting is to record them from the microphone and
compress the file into MP3 format. There is a free program called
Audacity (http://www.audacity.sourceforge.net),
which does this rather well. To create and publish the RSS feed, you can
use the Feed Editor software (http://www.extralabs.net),
which is extremely easy to use.
When all multimedia files and
the RSS feed of the podcast are ready, they must be published on a
web-server in order for the users to be able to access them.
Podcasting is rapidly becoming
more and more popular. More and more users become aware of it every day.
This can be explained by the so-called “iPod phenomenon.” In 2005,
“podcasting” became the “Word of the Year” of the Oxford Dictionary.
Podcasting is used in very different fields: mass media, marketing,
production and even religion.
Many people predict that
podcasting ultimately will replace radio. For instance, if you are
traveling on subway, you usually cannot listen to the radio. Even if you
can, the number of radio stations is rather limited. In the best case,
you might be able to learn about world events, but not about, say, the
features of new RSS readers.
Now imagine getting up
in the morning and taking your mp3 player (or connecting it to your
automobile audio player) and while on your way to the office being able
to listen to the news published on your favorite website, just like you
used to listen to the radio. The news segments were downloaded and
synchronized with the player automatically when plugged into your
computer overnight. Fantastic?
No. Reality! This is
the possibility that podcasting provides.
So, as you can see,
podcasting combines the best of the two widespread methods of
distributing information: Internet and radio. You can subscribe to the
pieces (podcasts) that you are interested in and listen to them when and
where you want.
Isn’t that the future of
radio?
About the author.
Dmitry Baranov is the editor of the
http://www.rss-specification.com website, and the author of a series
of articles and reviews related to RSS, podcasting, marketing and
programming.
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