By Ron Diemicke
Who doesn’t have an iPod nowadays? Apple’s Steve Jobs would like to think no one, but he’s striving to make that goal a reality everyday. iPods have become the biggest piece of portable technological self-expression to exist. Today people think of new dramatic ways to do more with the little Apple music player. The latest of these new crazes of iPod use is called “Podcasting.”
Although it has been referred to by different names, Podcasting is not something new. Podcasting is recording an audio program (either a blog or internet radio type program) and then making it available for download. This allows users to download audio files and listen to it on the go.
The reason for the term “Podcasting” is that it moved into full swing with the culture craze that is the iPod. Everyone is trying to get in on this “newest thing.” Of course, this is the short answer. There is a more technical end that separates “Podcasting” from “a guy who reads the weather on the internet recorded in mp3.”
Podcasting uses what is called RSS to syndicate the audio feed. This makes it so that if “Johnny voice of the world” has a Web site and wants to get his message out to the world, all he has to do is have guys who run Web sites put his RSS code on their site. Then a link appears on their sites for “Johnny’s” audio feed. Every time Johnny updates, the RSS makes sure that the audio is updated on those Web sites which publish his material automatically. The other advantage with Podcasting is that your computer will automatically update your MP3 player with the latest podcasts when connected via automatic synchronization.
What you might ask yourself is “Did someone just wake up one morning and go, ‘Podcasting – That sounds like a great idea.’?” RSS has been around in various forms for a while. There is a very good chance that you have seen RSS used and not even known it. It was just a matter of applying something that already existed for a new use.
Kevin Marks, Adam Curry and Dave Winer are mainly credited with the podcasting craze. They’re engineers who have had broad uses for the internet and have contributed in different ways. For “bloggers,” people who use the Internet as a sort of public journal for them to post their ideas and then let people fire back; the next logical step was to allow you to record yourself and blog in that fashion. Podcasting was the mother of invention from the necessity that was audio blogging. They each really got it going in their own way. Marks was one of the early experimenters with this technology and has been on the blogging scene. He is also one of the main contributors to Bloggercon. Curry is mainly credited with developing the first script to use RSS in conjunction with audio to allow synchronization. He is host to one of the most popular podcasts, “The Daily Source Code,” which is his personal daily blog in mp3. Winer was someone who had been in the software industry for a while and has been involved with various companies. He ended up right in the middle of the blogging community when his company which ran a website that allowed people to create Web sites easily using their software, found that most of the people were using their sites as blogs.
Blogs are where podcasting has really found its home, even though that’s not their only use. One of the biggest things to help move along podcasting was when Winer helped former NPR host Christopher Lydon attach full length audio interviews to his blog. These podcasts delt with blogging and the 2004 U.S. Presidential election and as a result they helped to boost the popularity of Curry’s iPodder RSS script.
In late 2004, many international radio stations caught onto this new fad and we’ve seen major developments as many stations have begun taking the hi-tech route. Canada’s CBC Radio one, Australia’s Triple J Network, Spain’s Cadena Ser, and Hong Kong’s Dragon Radio are just a few of the international radio stations that publish content available via podcast over the net. The BBC has also taken an active role by making two of their most popular shows, Fighting Talk and Today Programme available via mp3.
Here in the U.S. various outlets across the nation have also begun podcasting their material. Technological guru, Leo Laporte, began re-broadcasting his KFI Los Angeles radio program in mp3 over the net. WFMU in Manhattan has several regular podcasts on the net now. The biggest move on anyone’s part has been by the Infinity Broadcasting-owned radio station, KYOURadio, that announced that they would convert from over-the-air broadcasting to podcasting completely earlier this month.
Today, the common user probably doesn’t podcast, even though they might blog. The big question is how long it will take for podcasting to reach a major portion of the listeners out there on the internet, because once that happens, people won’t be too far behind trying to get in on “the new latest thing.” What will be really interesting is to see how long it takes someone to turn podcasting into a truly successful money making business venture. As with all innovative ideas and technologies, it isn’t really born until someone can make a buck off it.