Podcaasting is an emerging method of file distribution that has opened an array of marketing and communication opportunities to businesses. Podcasting can be used for talk shows, tutorials, music demos, educational training, stories, comedy clips, debates or even foreign language tutorials.
You can listen to MP3 files at any time. However, podcasts combine the ability to subscribe to a Web site and learn about any new additions immediately with the MP3 downloads. So, when you subscribe to a podcast, you can listen to either older editions of the podcast, or you can wait until the author creates and uploads a new one. You then set up your iPod to check periodically for updates. When a new podcast recording is available, iTunes downloads automatically.
What makes podcasting unique isn't the shows themselves necessarily, but the very special way that the shows are found and delivered to the audience.
This special delivery process is called RSS, or Real Simple Syndication. It's a system that lets you do three main things with a podcaster's show (or, "podcast"):
• locate a show and its unique channel, or RSS feed,
• open that feed and close it at will, and
• deliver each new episode to you as long as you have that feed open
• deliver each new episode to you as long as you have that feed open
All three items happen not because of any portable music player, but by software, like iTunes, that lets you locate the podcasts, and tell the podcaster you want to receive any new episodes. That's called "podcatching", by the way. You can do this on any computer with internet access.
There are many brands of podcasting software on the market. The Top Ten Reviews website has rated the top ten brands shown in the chart below:
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