Podcasting for Not Yet Techies

Podcasting is basically the creation of sound files in MP3 format and making them available for online download.

Podcasts can be music, opinions, lectures, commentary, interviews, recorded conference calls and so on. Many are in a format of a series  of episodes which you can subscribe to.

Since a podcast is in MP3 format, you can play and listen to it with your computer, iPod or other portable MP3 player. Podcasting has been described as TiVo for radio but this is not technically accurate since they're not recordings to actual radio shows with the commercials deleted (although I wish such a device were available.)

Part of podcasting is combining the audio file of the content with RSS (Real Simple Syndication) 2.0 so that news of its existence is available through the Internet to everybody subscribing to such RSS feeds.

Podcasting hit the big time on June 28, 2005 when Apple released iTunes 4.9, which had fully integrated pod management.

However, iTunes was not the first podcasting software client -- there were iPodder, Doppler and Podcast Tuner.

Now, you can also use iPodderX and PodNova.

Plus, podcasts are not only available on sites that specialize in them -- anybody with a website or blog can make podcasts available. And there are actually services that help you put up podcasts even if you don't have your own domain or blog. Such online URLs typically begin with "feed" or end with ".xml" .

Once you've downloaded a podcast file, you can transfer or sync it to your iPod or other MP3 player so that you can listen to it at your convenience. You can also burn the file onto a CD and listen to it with a CD player.

Most podcasts last from 15 to 40 minutes. 80 minutes is the upper limit for burning the file onto one CD.

If you want to create your own podcast, you'll first of all need a microphone for your PC. If your computer didn't come with its own internal microphone, you'll have to buy an external one and hook it up.

Then you need some software to record the sound. Audacity is one of the most used since it's good and it's free. It will store information on your podcast as ID3 tags that're embedded in the final MP3 file.

You can also use:

Audio Hijack Pro -- for Macs

Total Sound Recorder -- for Windows

If you want to really get into editing podcasts:

Peak 4

Adobe Audition

Sound Forge

Apple's GarageBand (included with the Mac OS X desktop)

Apple's Logic Express

Other software that helps you create podcasts is:

Podcast Producer

MixCast Live

If you have no blog or domain name, you can get your podcast online with:

Ourmedia

Liberated Syndication

Odeo

Audio Blog

If you have a blog, Wordpress or other blog software should be able to handle the MP3 file.

If you have a domain of your own but no blog, try:

Podcastamatic

Dircaster

Happy podcasting!

Next: VSTO 2005