We're into a whole new world with the Internet, and whenever we sort of cross another plateau in our development, there are those who seek to take advantage of it. So this is a replay of things that have happened throughout our history. Bill Clinton
Downloading Podcast News





With the rise of podcasting, many individuals and


organizations are finding that podcasting is a great way


to distribute information, from music and comedy


shows to talk shows, even podcast news. CNET is one


of the groups that is distributing a news podcast. CNET,


being an online technology site, naturally found a niche


distributing a tech news related podcast. CNET's recent


podcasts covered such topics as viruses that attack cell


phones, problems with Google's software, China's web


restrictions and the "Great Firewall of China", and the


FTC's attack on spyware. These news items were


distributed in a sound file called an mp3 file that is


downloadable to a listener's computer for listening


whenever they wish. While these files were available


straight from CNET's site, the majority of them are


shared through the use of an RSS file. An RSS file is a


small piece of XML coding that is downloadable by


programs designed to read it. These programs are called


podcast clients, and the user can input the address of the


RSS files that hold the information on the feed. The


feed will contain links to the media files of the podcast,


and will download the new updates automatically.



More sites than CNET are finding that podcast news is


an expoitable technology. The British Broadcasting


Corporation podcasts some of it's programs, as well as


the US radio network NPR. The NPR, because its work


is created by a variety of different groups, treats


podcasts differently from show to show. The NPR show


"This American Life" distributes a podcast of the show


through a site called audible.com, which allows feed


listeners to subscribe to the feed for a small fee and


download the show . The NPR Hourly News show, on


the other hand, shares a short 5 minute broadcast that


summarizes the news for free. Since the NPR is taking a


radio show and converting it into a file that is


downloadable by the user, little is lost in the translation.


The sound is designed to convey the entire story, and so


podcast subscribers are able to treate the podcast as


nothing more than TIVO for the radio. ABC's podcast


of the news show Nightline, on the other hand, is


simply the sound track from the television show. This


has been one of the criticisms of the Nightline podcast,


because by merely stripping the sound from what is


designed as a television show, much information is not


given to the users. Listeners have problems telling who


is who because they miss the visual cues that were


supposed to be there, and there is no truly easy way to


convert the shows. For this reason, some news shows


have been moving from audio podcasts to video ones.


They can take the video information directly from the


show that is broadcast, lower the visual resolution to


shrink the file, and distribute it online as a podcast.

Flash Player Podcast

Instead, the the feed.

Yahoo even has a publishing their own podcast. The DNS addresses internet will know where your site is. The RSS file is thencomputer. Inputting these server addresses into the internet. Many of them are even free.

After logging in, Yahoo allows userswhen new episodes are available.
A Brief History Of The iPod Podcast
By Steven Sharpe

 What is now called a podcast traces its orgins to the first ipod podcasts, the creation of distributed mp3 files that could be downloaded and played on Apple's music player, the iPod.

When the iPod came out, and users discovered what a wonderful thing it was for holding music, some people had the idea of loading things that weren't necessarily songs. Some of the people that got their hands on the iPod took the route of reverse engineering the iPod and loading on different firmware, or operating system, but others had the idea of sharing small sound files that could be played on the iPod.

The technology for distributing the files already existed, with RSS feeds. RSS feeds were a means of generating machine readable files that could share information between a server and a user. Many blogs already used them to keep readers up to date with the latest posts, but some hopeful podcasters had the idea of enclosing links to sound files within the RSS feed and downloading the file to the computer.

With the change in RSS feeds, ipod podcast took off, and podcasting became a popular way to share files. Users saw podcasting as a way to become radio hosts, or dj's, and a variety of podcasts began popping up. Software was written to automatically check the RSS feeds, extract the links to the podcast episodes, and download the files. These programs became known as podcast clients.

By this time, podcasting had moved beyond the ipod, and they were not simply making an ipod podcast anymore. Some people had figured out how to use even the PlayStation Portable gaming console as a podcast player.

It was more difficult than downloading podcasts to the ipod, since the PSP used a different format for it's files, but PSP podcasts began popping up. In addition, podcasting made inroads into the wider audience of people without iPods, who simply saw podcasting as an extremely convenient way to receive news, music, and entertainment over the internet.

Today, while the iPod podcast type still exists, fewer people subscribe to podcasts as a way of gaining portable media files they can listen to anywhere. Although that is still an attractive part of podcasting, it seems to be eclipsed by the ease with which podcasting has become a content delivery system. Now, podcasting has become tied up with the rising number of audio and video blogs, where blogging is done not by post, but through media files uploaded to the blog.

These blogs, and podcasting in general, take advantage of the shrinking cost of broadband internet connections, and the rising number of people with high speed access to offer a picture of the internet rich with multimedia files.

Steve is the CEO & Editor in Chief of Article Land. He is offering a free ebook on his site entitled Article Marketing Avalanche, a great read, a great book, go get it now.