The Podcasting Revolution

A new online media is emerging as a heavy contender on the Internet. This new online media, which offers on demand audio programming for a variety of platforms and purposes, is gaining in popularity day by day and is easy to take advantage of. This technology has been named “Podcasting” (not affiliated with Apple’s iPod). Let’s peel the podcasting onion and give you more detail on how you can take advantage of this technology.

A podcast is some type of online audio content delivered through a Webfeed or a link on a specific web site in the form a digital audio file. For example, if you have a favorite news channel, you could use this technology to download the latest news for the day and play it either on your computer or mp3 player such as iPod or Media player (any mp3 compatible device). A podcast could also be compared to TIVO in that you can choose what audio programming you want to listen to. So if you missed the president’s speech the other night, simply download the podcast and listen to it on your commute to work.

What is truly great about podcasting is that any business can take advantage of it. Some of the more popular uses of podcasts include: radio, music, talk shows, and news commentary. For the innovative thinker, podcasts could be used to broadcast your quarterly earnings reports, interviews about your growth potential, self-guided tours, children’s books, church sermons, and the list goes on and on. Can you see the possibilities? You no longer have to wait to hear radio content; you can now choose what you want to hear and take it with you to listen to at your convenience.

Now that you know what you want to do with podcasts, you may wonder how they are created. In order to create a podcast, you must take your audio content (created using a digital voice recorder or specialized software such as Audioblog) and save it as a digital audio file such as an MP3 or WMA. There are a variety of file formats available today for you to choose from. Once you have your digital audio content in the proper file format, you can play it either on your computer or any MP3 player that supports your file format.

Why is it getting so popular? People today are downloading music and audio content at an alarming rate. With the increased sales of MP3 players, more and more people can take advantage of podcasts by simply downloading them to the handheld MP3 players.

This article was first published on InternetNews.com. To read the full article, click here.