Podcasting is a relatively new concept. What it is essentially is online radio on demand. Podcasters are people, usually bloggers who record an audio show and then publish it on their blog via a Feed (RSS or Atom) to which others can subscribe to and use special software like Juice to automatically download their favorite shows.
After downloading any Podcasts you can put them in your iPod, other portable mp3 player, or even listen to them on your PC. Most Podcasts are available on the “mp3″ compressed audio format.
How to get Podcasts
Once you locate a Podcast at a Podcasting directory or on one of the blogs you read, you can use Juice to subscribe to it. This means thatJuice will automatically check for new shows from a particular stream and bring them to you so you can listen at your convinience. A good place to find Podcasting shows would be the directory over here.
How to run your own Podcast
Running your own Podcast can be a very simple or a very complicated thing, depending on your computer skills and blog service you use. Blogger users can use AudioBlogger.com which allows to simply phone in your posts and they are automatically saved in mp3 and upladed as a post to your blog. WordPress users can record their own mp3 files using a microphone on their PC and an audio recording software such as Audacity. Then they should upload the mp3 file to their web directory and write a new blog post about each show which contains a direct, full path link to the mp3 file (e.g. http://www.me.com/audio/08082005.mp3 ). Latest versions of WordPress (1.5 upwards), take care of publishing the file with its own Podcasting feed and special code enclosure. However you should look to the relevant WordPress codex article here for more information.
Good luck whatever you do, and remember to check back soon for the grand opening of the AllEver.com weekly Podcast, featuring yours truly on a talk show unlike anything you’ve heard before… (oops, you’ve probably heard that before already, haven’t you?)
External Links & Resources
- Hardware
- Apple 20 GB iPod M9282LL/A
- Books
- Podcasting: Do It Yourself Guide
- Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Podcasting
- Podcasting For Dummies
- Secrets of Podcasting : Audio Blogging for the Masses
- Online Services
- AudioBlogger.com
- More Information
- Wikipedia: Podcasting
- WordPress Codex: Podcasting
August 24th, 2005 at 12:42 pm
isn’t that illegal? It sounds like it must infringe some type of copyright…
August 24th, 2005 at 6:54 pm
Actually, no! It is perfectly legal! Unless you play music in your Podcast, for which you haven’t payed the proper license for at RIAA.. However, you can play copylefted music, such as music licensed under a creative commons license! Check that out at: http://creativecommons.org/
Also, try Brad Templeton’s “brief intro to copyright” at: http://www.templetons.com/brad/copyright.html
September 24th, 2006 at 10:33 pm
Pavlos said…
“However, you can play copylefted music, such as music licensed under a creative commons license!”
Now all the Creative Commons licenses are copyleft.
In fact AFAIK out of all the 18 Creative Commons licenses, only 1 of them is copyleft. (The CC-BY-SA one.) That’s it.
– Charles
September 27th, 2006 at 4:36 am
Charles, I appreciate you pointing this out, since I would hate there to be any confusion over the use of the term “copyleft”. What I mean by it there is a more liberal license than traditional copyright, such as one by the Creative Commons. Not all CC licenses are copyleft in the strict sense of the word.
On another note, by no means should it be perceived that material described as “copyleft” is in the public domain, unless it is specified as such.
Perhaps the license you mention is one of the more liberal licenses via Creative Commons, and people can visit this page to discover more about Creative Commons licensing.
For more information on the term “copyleft”, Wikipedia has this entry.