What is podcasting?

So what is podcasting? Let's listen to some podcasters first.

aosiniao : for me it is an audioblog, but for someone it is a means of propaganda or advertising. In general, many explanations can be found.

gimlis : Podcasting is the conversation of one or more people into a microphone and posting records later.
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ponomar : Podcasts - one of the ways to tell that you are interested, to the greatest possible number of people without having to repeat.

Number one podcaster : podcasting is a new kind of blogging, a new way to convey your thoughts and to some extent overcome the fears of an audience and develop new skills. Podcasting is interesting, but ... expensive.

Podcasting is now at the hearing of all who actively use the Internet. Here we hear a “podcast”, “arpod”, “subfeyf” ...

So, podcasting is another way to convey any information to people. This word came from the iPod and Broadcasting (English "broadcasting"). Some "ipod-broadcasting". Of course, the iPod does not have any direct relation to podcasting, it’s just that it is. You just need to pay tribute to Apple, the mp3 players of this company made a revolution in their "genre", and now forever immortalized in the name of the new art. This, in principle, suits everyone except Apple’s direct competitors in the mp3 player market. According to Wikipedia, “ Creative , which makes players under the Zen brand, proposed the term <span lang =” en “xml: lang =“ en ”> Zencasting ” ( source ).

The mechanism of podcasting is simple and does not use any revolutionary technologies or unique discoveries: a person (podcaster) records an mp3 file (most often mp3), the listener downloads and listens to the file. That is, in principle, podcasts could appear much earlier, as soon as the Internet was able to store and deliver files. But there is another component of this case, which appeared relatively recently and influenced not only podcasting.

This thing is called RSS. Having entered “what is RSS” in a search engine, you will receive hundreds of articles on this topic, so I will not go into details. In addition, if you read this blog by subscription, then you already have an idea about this technology. RSS, roughly speaking, is a subscription tool. Remember the paper subscription - each new issue of the newspaper is put in your inbox? .. RSS is the same. Each new podcast release (or blog entry for example) automatically comes to you.

This idea is very simple and very convenient, it was she who allowed blogging to evolve a few years ago and podcasting. The podcast RSS feed has the same structure as a blog, with only one additional field describing the location of the audio or video file.

A podcast client is a program that can work with RSS feeds. Holders of iPods usually use the standard version - Apple iTunes. I have been using it myself, and have been satisfied for a year already :) After launch, iTunes checks every subscription (of course, from those you yourself have listed) and, if there is a new episode, downloads it yourself. That is to get a fresh podcast, in principle, more convenient than watching a fresh series of the television series! Anytime, anywhere, in one click!

The scheme is not complicated at all, agree. Podcaster made a fresh release, put it on the Internet, at the same second a new entry appeared in the RSS feed. The client program of each of the subscribers receives a notification - “fresh feed” and downloads it automatically. Podcaster satisfied, listener satisfied.

Of course, a subscription is not the only way to get a podcast, a file is a file, you can download it just like that. Or even listen directly on the Internet, in the browser. But - RSS-subscription is the most correct way. And the listener will not miss a single release, and the podcaster will see good convenient statistics.

Now let's deal with some more terms. First, podcasting is the name of this art. Cinema, broadcasting, painting, podcasting. Therefore, to say “I downloaded one podcasting” is a blunder, it just hurts my ears, and I did not hear such words somewhere, but in one podcast !

The word "podcast" has two meanings. First, a separate file, release is a podcast. Therefore, they say, for example, "podcast number 18". Secondly, the podcast is the whole series of releases. Podcast “Nastya FM” in the sense of the whole project, the entire series, if you like, and at the same time “Podcast Nastya FM number 42” - in the sense of one release, one file.

Podcast terminal is a website where you can upload your podcasts. That is, roughly speaking, this is hosting, file storage. But modern terminals have many possibilities - at the very least, this is automatic creation of RSS feeds - you don’t even need to know what the RSS format looks like, just upload your work to the site. In addition, at any terminal there are social functions - starting from commenting, ending with “friend” and messages.

There are currently two main podcast terminals in Runet - Russianpodcasting.ru and PodFM.ru .

When they say "arpod" - they mean Russianpodcasting.ru, because there is a short address - rpod.ru.

Well, finally "subfax". Already known to you the root "pod" and "safe" (English "safe"). Music that is licensed can be used in your podcasts without any problems. Ordinary commercial music, to which we are all accustomed, cannot be used in podcasts just like that, because a license does not allow it. Sub-music does not mean bad, but most of such music is the fruit of the work of beginners and not-so-popular musicians and bands. You can find links to some sources of sub-music in this blog in the right column, but so far there are few of them. In addition, there will be a separate article about sub-music.

I hope you now have a general idea of ​​podcasting. As you can see, nothing complicated!

Original on podcastim.ru