Podcasts have become audio and video versions of blogging. They are delivered by all manner of amateurs and professional organizations (usually news services) and are delivered through a multiplicity of channels. Podcasts are audio or video “bites” that address a particular topic or provide a small segment of entertainment or information.
YouTube and MySpace are loaded with millions of podcasts. Outside the adolescent networking space, there are scores of podcast feeds that put out new “bites” on a regular basis. If you are interested in exploring this new wrinkle in the broadband universe, there are a couple of tools you’ll need to make it all work and several tools to help you find podcast feeds that might interest you.
The principal tool for subscribing to a podcast feed is a podcast or news aggregator. There are dozens of them; many are freeware. Generally a “newsfeed” is provided in either RSS or Atom format; the podcasts that are syndicated are usually uploaded to a web server for delivery. Any web server will do, and there are many services that are dedicated to hosting podcasts exclusively. An RSS or Atom feed...