So tell me then, what's a podcast?

 Everywhere you go on the Internet you see multimedia files - audio and video - either playing (streaming) online or available for people to download. What turns these normal files into podcasts is the ability for users to download these files automatically when each new file is placed on the Internet.

 Podcasts can be about anything. There are podcasts about parenting, politics, computers, cooking, books and banking. If there isn't a podcast about your particular realm of interest then why not start your own? It's relatively easy to do and it's lots of fun too.

 There are hundreds of podcasts featuring music - some of them are great, whereas others are of poor quality by wannabe DJs... (Yes, Sturgeon's Law applies to podcasts too!) Because home podcasters are not allowed to use copyright-protected music from their vast music collections most of the music found on podcasts is of the podsafe variety. This means that it's been made available by the artist for podcasters to use in exchange for a mention on the podcast and a link back to the artist's website.

 Podcasts are normally created in a series, with each new episode or show being uploaded to the Internet on a regular or semi-regular basis. Some are daily, others weekly, and still others are published as and when the podcaster gets round to doing it.

 

 Using my It's A Frog's Life Acoustic Podcast as an example, there are two ways to get the podcast  -  manually and automatically.

 To get the podcast manually all you need to do is to visit the show notes and either listen to the show online or download the show for later. My podcast is an mp3 file which can be listened to on your computer, uploaded to your mp3 player, or burned onto a CD.

Visit the shownotes
at itsafrogslife.net/podcast

 If you want to make sure you don't miss any of the shows then you can get them automatically by 'subscribing' to the 'feed' for FREE!. Don't be put off by the word 'subscribe' - this just means that a program on your computer checks to see if there are any new shows and automatically downloads them. iTunes is the most popular program to use, but others are available. There are also online services that do the same, such as Google and Yahoo!. Full details of how to subscribe can be found at my Feedburner site.

Download the shows automatically -
visit feeds.feedburner.com/itsafrogslife

  Now that you know what a podcast is there's nothing stopping you. Use iTunes or visit other podcast directories and see what's out there. You never know, you may be pleasantly surprised!

Return to My Podcast page