What is Podcasting?

Interviews and discussions you'll be talking about all day.

What is Pocasting
At the core a podcast is an audio file that is automatically received from the internet and then synced to your MP3 player. The files are received by subscribing to what's called a podcast feed. Sometimes you also hear this called an RSS feed, but that is just geek speak that gets used to try and impress you.

Maybe you have seen the small orange icons that look like this or this on some web pages. This icon is a link to a news feed. Blogs use this kind of feed to deliver new content to their subscribed readers.

The same kind of feed is used to deliver podcast shows to your computer. You don’t need to know how the feed works to subscribe. You just need to know that you can subscribe to a podcast feed to get the latest shows when they are released.

You don’t have to remember to check for new shows. You don’t have to download it. It's done for you.

You can think of a podcast as being like a magazine because you subscribe to it and receive new content regularly.

Even though subscribing to a feed is the most convenient way to receive podcast, you don’t have to subscribe to listen. Many podcasts can also be streamed from the web or downloaded directly as an MP3 file.

What is a Podcast Aggregator?

To subscribe to a podcast you use a software program called a podcatcher. Sometimes this is also called a podcast aggregator (but again this is geek speak). Just know that podcatcher and aggregator mean the same thing. It's the software that you use to subscribe to and receive podcasts.

The podcatcher regularly checks the feed for new content that has been posted. When a new podcast show is found, it's downloaded. The next time you plug your MP3 player into your computer, the new podcasts shows are synced by your media player (such as iTunes).

Now You Can Listen to Exactly What You Want, When You Want and How You Want!

With podcasts, you're in control. Earlier I mentioned that a podcast is kind of like a magazine subscription. Podcasts are also like Tivo because you're in control of when you listen to it.

You can rewind a podcast. You can play it over and over. You can pause it. You can store it wherever you want. You can delete it when you want. Podcasts give you the control.

You can listen to podcasts on your computer, burn them to CD or transfer them to your MP3 player. You're in control of when and how you listen.

Compare that to listening to the radio. Big corporations decide what you get to listen to and when you listen to it. It's all controlled by what will make them money. Now you can have radio your way.

Unlike streaming audio, you can take a podcast with you. To listen to streaming content you're tied to a computer with a fast internet connection.

Now compare podcasts to a download from iTunes. You're not limited to how many times you can download a podcasts or how many times you can burn it. It's not limited to only playing in certain media players. Speaking of iTunes, with podcasts there are…