Podcasting - what you need to know
by Magnus
According to Wikipedia, a podcast is “a digital media file, or a series of such files, that is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers. A podcast is a specific type of webcast which, like radio, can mean either the content itself or the method by which it is syndicated; the latter is also termed podcasting.” (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting) That may be a technically accurate definition but what does it really mean and where did it all start?
It all really starts with something called RSS (for more information about RSS, see “RSS 101” in the March 2007 issue of shuffle). In 2000, David Winer came up with RSS as a means to “push” out content to subscribers. Think of it as you subscribing to a show on TV (the podcast “feed”) and whenever there is a new episode of that show, it’s automatically downloaded to your TV and you can watch it. Soon, and it seems to have happened in 2001, people started at add digital audio “enclosures” to RSS feeds. The feed then can point to audio or video files for new content. This means you can subscribe to a feed, and when there’s new content, it’s downloaded to your Mac, and by extension, copied onto your iPod. Even though we currently don’t do any podcasting at EmiratesMac, we do offer several RSS feeds, for the blog, the newsletter, the gallery, and more.
Podcasting has also become popular in education, where you can find both student- and teacher generated podcasts covering many different subjects and pedagogical approaches. One podcast example in education is Abu Dhabi Women’s College (podcast.adwc.hct.ac.ae).