Podcasting: The Next Big Thing
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Who would have imagined that something as small as a portable digital music player combined with software someone came up with in their spare time could lead to the democratization of the radio show? Don't know what I mean? It's called podcasting, and in the mere seven months since its birth, it has mushroomed in popularity. Read on to find out how you can participate.
Perhaps big tech and media companies should have realized this might happen when Web surfers started to listen to radio over the Internet. If radio stations can do it, why can’t a tech savvy person do it at home? After all, plenty of people – including some who aren’t quite so tech savvy – have put together their own personal Web pages and maintain their own blogs. Why not “broadcast” your own radio show over the Internet? Upload your show, and let your listeners download it to enjoy whenever they please.
The phenomenon is called “podcasting,” because most people who listen to these shows use Apple’s iPod as the playback device. A search on the term in Google yields more than 1,270,000 hits. It is covered in Wikipedia, that quintessential online encyclopedia. There are websites devoted entirely to news about podcasting. Other websites serve as directories for finding podcasts, and they list literally hundreds of podcast shows on a wide range of topics, including entertainment, philosophy, computers and the Internet (of course), science, and many more. As even more evidence that podcasting is the next blog, consider that Blogware is running ads on Google urging surfers to “Get a Blogware blog and start podcasting today.”
While listeners don’t actually need an iPod or any digital music player to listen to a podcast, using one is part of the appeal. It is the same kind of time-shifting capability that attracted television viewers to VCRs and later to TiVo; broadcasts can be recorded or otherwise saved to be enjoyed whenever it is convenient. Podcasting does TiVo one better by making the shows portable. Listeners can enjoy the shows during their commute, on the beach, while exercising, or at any time and place that they can use their digital music player. According to one podcaster, it is a way for the Internet to come into the rest of your life, at times when you’re not actually connected.
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