A crash course in podcasting

The San Jose Mercury News has a good package of stories today about podcasting:

Dawn C. Chmielewski: Podcasting power. New technology delivers personalized broadcasts to your MP3 player.

Michael Bazeley: My very own radio station has transformed my listening habits.

How to tune in to a podcast

From Michael's story:

Thanks to a new technology called podcasting, I've turned my iPod into a personalized radio station, loading it with talk shows and cutting edge music that I'd never be able hear on traditional radio stations. It's transformed my listening habits overnight.

Although it's new, I'm convinced podcasting will transform the way many people consume media, just as blogging and TiVo have. When you can program your own radio station, carry it with you anywhere and pause and restart it at will, who needs mainstream, advertising-supported broadcast radio?

As technology guru Doc Searls wrote on his blog in October:

``Podcasting will shift much of our time away from an old medium where we wait for what we might want to hear to a new medium where we choose what we want to hear, when we want to hear it, and how we want to give everybody else the option to listen to it as well.''

The technology behind podcasting -- conceived by technologist Dave Winer and former MTV VJ Adam Curry -- is simple. By wrapping a few lines of code around MP3 files, Web site owners make it possible for people to ``subscribe'' to their audio programs using special software.

I've gotten hooked as well. I had scheduled an interview with podcaster Eric Rice to videotape him doing a podcast, but he came down with a cold and we have to reschedule. I want to create a short movie on How to podcast, and publish it on Ourmedia.

How to tune in to a Podcast

1. Download software that reads RSS 2.0 feeds with enclosed audio files from sites like www.iPodderX.com for Macs, or iPodder.NET for PCs.

2. This software automatically downloads audio files to your computer and moves the tracks to iTunes or other music management software for transfer to your iPod or another digital music player.

3. Subscribe to the feeds you want. Sites such as www.iPodder.org, www.iPodder.net, www.Podcasters.org or www.Podcast.net are good places to start your search. Your computer does the rest. It will automatically search for the latest Podcasts and move the audio files into iTunes or other media jukebox software.

4. Simply synchronize your iPod or other portable digital music player with the computer to transfer the Podcast.

5. If your media management software doesn't automatically download the Podcast to your digital music player, you can drag the audio file directly into the player, as you would any MP3 music track.