Clapp McNamara

MySpace and youtube are loaded with numerous podcasts. Away from adolescent networking area, you'll find scores of podcast feeds tha...

Podcasts have grown to be audio and video versions of blogging. They're delivered by all manner of amateurs and professional organizations (frequently news services) and are delivered via a multiplicity of routes. Podcasts are audio or video 'bites' that handle a specific subject or provide a small segment of entertainment or information.

Facebook and MySpace are packed with millions of podcasts. Outside-the teenage networking space, there are scores of podcast feeds that put out new 'hits' on a regular basis. If you're considering discovering this new wrinkle in the broadband universe, there are a couple of tools you'll have to make it all work and several tools to help you find podcast bottles that might interest you.

The key device for subscribing to a podcast supply is a podcast or news aggregator. There are dozens of them; many are freeware. Usually a 'news-feed' is presented in both RSS or Atom format; the podcasts that are syndicated are often published to your web server for distribution. Any web server can do, and there are many ser-vices that are specialized in hosting podcasts specifically. An RSS or Atom feed supplies a URL for request, and new content is saved finds it's been updated and when the aggregator reads the feed.

This is one way new content from the feed is sent to your computer immediately, or at least at the times your aggregator is set to test the feed. An aggregator will quickly deliver a podcast from a request supply that you have registered for - broadly speaking it will be saved to your local machine and play in the default media player on your computer.

It is possible to find a list of aggregators and where to find them at: http://www.podcastingnews.com/topics/Podcast_Software.html. After you've got an aggregator set up, you can go looking for podcast companies which may interest you on the regular basis. Like many computer request ser-vices, you may get throwing a podcast on the certain day since the topic does not interest you or you do not have time. But the idea would be to find a number of typical podcast feeds that provide information on topics that interest you and to absorb that information in audio or video format.

When you have located a website providing a podcast company, you'll usually find a switch that'll make you a