OK so I’m at the bus stop and there’s an old guy with some sort of cheap third-party iPod, and he’s listening to a podcast of horse racing!
Amazing! This technology is really hitting the bigtime, even old guys in the street are using it. This guy must have had wireless broadband on there too because I think he was listening to real-time streaming commentary about the horse racing. Brilliant!
9 comments
10:17 pm
Weird, but I guess Gambling and Sex Industry types are usually the first to exploit new technologies. Thank Jesus he wasn’t enjoying a pod cast from the latter in a public place for your sakes…
10:58 pm
Actually it must have been WiFi because he kept calling it his wireless.
9:12 am
Are you sure he wasn’t just holding a transistor radio?
9:18 am
BTW Call me old fashioned but these new podcast things just sound like longer Mp3’s… What is the technical difference here?
9:34 am
Whoooosh! (Note to self: maybe my attempt at humour was a little too subtle)
Podcasting is just a fancy-pants term for radio shows in mp3 format. Maybe you could call it an audio blog. It’s a series in MP3 format (yes, generally longer than a single music track) with an RSS feed to let podcast receiver software know when new episodes are released. eg in iTunes you subscribe to a podcast and any new episodes are regularly downloaded onto your iPod.
Try this on your PC – I’m using Juice (formerly iPodder)
3:55 pm
Okay, right I missed the oldman joke… … but I’m still not convinced of this podcast thing… if it is an Mp3 format you obviously don’t necessarily need an Ipod to play it…correct? so why podcast? Has this got something to do with the body-snatchers? sounds like another case of new and improved, lemon scented branding…
4:17 pm
Not strictly connected to iPods, that’s just the name that stuck because podcasting only really took off big when iPods and other portable mp3 devices came along. So don’t get hung up on the name. Think of it as just the same as blogging. Regularly updated websites aren’t new, but the fact that anybody can do it really easily without being a technical guru has meant that the whole self publishing thing has exploded. Podcasting might be considered the audio version.
I don’t have an iPod, I listen to podcasts via my PC mostly. Why podcast? It’s just a way of getting content out there and communicating, like blogging but an audio version. It’s the whole advance of syndication (RSS) that’s making it really useful. The other part of it is it’s radio in the hands of the masses, not subject to commercial pressure or government licensing and censorship.
Anyway, check out the Wikipedia article on Podcasting for more details.
10:16 am
Okay, now I am convinced… to the point where I am going to attempt to make my own podcast (or superlong mp3) over the xmas break, what tools would you recommend?
10:32 am
Hehe “superlong mp3″. That’s a good one, I hope it catches on.
All you really need is a website, a mic and an audio editor. I’m liking Audacity (it’s free!).
And here’s a beginner’s guide to podcasting on the cheap.
Totally looking forward to it! Looks like my first dabble will be going up early in the new year…