What Is Podcasting: Chris Pirillo Finds Out

Chris Pirillo has put together a great introduction to what podcasting is. If you have an audio enabled personal computer and are interested in the newest online trend you may really want to listen to this excellent 45-minute intro to podcasting.

Podcasting is all the rage right now among geeks and the reason for this is that this new trend bases its strength on the distribution potential of RSS and its capability to carry integrated images and audio clips in its newsfeeds.

 

 

Chris Pirillo introduces podcasting by interviewing his girlfriend Ponzi and he gets a lot of valuable answers for the developer community. Final users are quite disinterested in the technical side of all this, and they clearly voice their desire to see simple, integrated applications that make their lives easier.

In addition Chris adds a fantastic mini-anthology of opinions from 14 great tech enthusiasts: from Steve Gillmor to Marc Canter (he has got a great one) and everyone in between.

Chris and Ponzi were also looking for a new name that was kind of easy to adopt for the normal users. On-demand radio, is probably a much better way of describing this tivo-like technology to the non-geek user.

You can basically synch-up your MP3 portable audio player to RSS feeds which integrate audio "enclosures". That is people can subscribe to audio programs and can receive them inside their computer through RSS feeds. This allow for the audio program to become independent of time and to allow listeners to choose themselves when to listen to their preferred content.

Anyone can create a podcast by making an audio recording available online while making part of an RSS feed.

"Several trends are converging: digital audio production tools are cheap and accessible; new distribution paths like streaming, satellite radio, digital broadcast radio, wireless and 'podcasting' are emerging. And concerns over broader media consolidation underline the importance of independent voices and non-commercial journalism."
(Source: Online Journalism Review - GLASER ONLINE "Will Satellite, 'Podcasting' Bring a Renaissance to Radio Journalism?" - Oct.12 2004)

A must-listen to on-demand radio show. Recommended.