Podcast Features:

Pod-cast: (according to the New Oxford English Dictionary 2005 Word of the Year) is a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player.  But although the popular word is a combination of the terms "iPod" and "broadcast" this can be a bit misleading.

Apple's definition is more accurate: A podcast is audio or visual content that is automatically delivered over a network via free subscription. Once subscribed to, podcasts can be regularly distributed over the Internet or within your school’s network and accessed with an iPod, laptop, or desktop computer (both Macs and PCs).You don't have to continually check web sites, to get the latest version; this is handled automatically by special software. You can listen to any show, any time you want. 

Podcast - Definition - A Web feed of audio or video files placed on the Internet for distribution. A user subscribes to the feed. Content is automatically downloaded when it becomes available. This automatic delivery distinguishes a podcast from a simple download or real-time streaming.

Podcasts can be played on your computer or on an MP3 player, such as an iPod. The word podcast is derived from iPod, but you need not own an iPod to listen to a podcast

Simply put, a podcast is audio content available on the Internet that can be automatically delivered to your computer or MP3 player. Strip away all the confusion about feeds, aggregators, subscriptions, and so on, "Audio on the web".

Podcasts really aren't broadcasts in the normal sense of the word; you have to connect to a site on the Internet to download it. And you don't need an iPod or any portable music player to listen to broadcasts. Athough, many people use the term to refer to any audio clips available for downloading from the web; in the strictest sense, however, a true podcast isn't just an audio file that can be downloaded; a true podcast allows you to subscribe to a "feed" of the Podcast so that whenever a new version of the podcast is made available, it gets automatically downloaded to the subscriber's computer.

To find podcasts, browse your favorite websites, or Directories of podcasts and keep an eye out for links to podcasts. There are also some popular collections of podcasts. 

http://www.techpodcasts.com

http://www.podcast.net

http://podcastbunker.com (more professional podcast

Podcatching Software: (technically called Podcast Aggregating Software or Podcast Clients) is the softwear you need if you want to subscribe and automate your listening to podcasts.

Podcast Feeds: A feed is a document written in XML that often contains summaries of, and links to, articles on a web site. Basically it is a form of syndication, that allows its creator to make content available for other sites to use, or for people to download using special software called aggregators. Aggregators are programs that are designed to donload the content of XML feeds, and to check for updates on a regular basis. Because of this ability to automatically check for updates, web feeds are most commonly used on news sites, blogs, and any site that frequently updates its content. The combination of "feeds" and "aggregators" allows people to reduce time spent in constantly checking for new content on web sites. All they need do is subscribe to a feed and tell the aggregating software how often to check for new content. These aggregators are often called RSS readers. Depending on who you ask, RSS can stand for "Rich Site Summary" or "Really Simple Sindication". Basically RSS uses a form of XML and is the technology behind syndication.

As a quick example, the Apple web browser Safari is a basic RSS Reader. If I visit a page that includes an RSS Feed like the New York Times, I'll see a small RSS button on the right side of the URL address window, telling me that there is an RSS Feed associated with this page.  If I click on the RSS icon, it displays the RSS feeds. What you see are just the headlines, and the first couple of sentences of the articles on the NYT homepage. This allows me to quickly scan the news, and if I want more information, I click on a link to read the entire webpage. (Safari lets me control how much information is included on the display of each feed) The point is that to create a podcast that can be subscribed to, the link to the podcast has to be wrapped up in an RSS feed; The software you use to subcscribe to podcasts is still called an aggregator, or more specifically "podcatcher" software. So, you need podcasting software in order to publish information to an RSS feed; and you need "podcatching" software to subscribe to podcasts and automatically transfer the latest content on this feed to your computer.

What's the difference between audio file downloads and subscribing to a podcast. You can always visit a podcasting site and download the specific audio file that interests you. However, you might easily miss an important download, or forget to check back to an important source of information. Instead of having to remember to keep checking back, podcasts allows for subscriptions, so that my computer will automatically follow the latest information, keeping it available for me in an aggregator on my computer.

There are dozens of podcatching (aggregator) software; I recommend a program called "iTunes" or "juice" formerly called "ipodder", available for both Mac and Windows at http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net. Once installed Juice allows you to visit many existing Podcast sites using its built-in Podcast Directory. Or you can copy and paste the URLs for new podcast feeds, under the add new Subscriptions tab and save it. Immediately Juice makes a number of previous podcasts available to me. I can download the one that interest me. 

Under Juice's preferences, I can select a preferred player, and other options like update frequency.

iTunes is a special case. If you are looking for the simplest way of managing podcasts, iTunes 4.9 is the easiest solution to use (compared to the previous example). In iTunes, it now has the podcasting listing; if not displayed, check the Edit > Preferences > Parental > Disable Podcasts.

First head to the Music Store, and select the Podcasts category. You can select a category, and listen to a sample of an episode from a feed. You can click on Get Episode to the right of a podcast, and listen to the entire single episode without subscribing. Clicking on the right arrow next to the various feeds, I can preview some of the episodes before subscribing.  To actually subscribe, Isimply click the "subscribe" button (no copy and paste needed) and now in the podcasts section of iTunes I will find an index of all the previous episodes. 

The preferences...determines iTunes behavior (how often it checks for updates, how many it will download at a time, which podcasts it is to manage). There is also a iPod preferences, todetermine which shows will be automatically copied over to your iPod. Once you subscribe, iTunes will continue to montor the feed based on your preferences, until you unsubscribe. To unsubscribe, have the podcast selected in the Podcast list, and click the "Unsubscribe" button at the bottom.  The feed will remain on the list, with a subscribe button adjacent to its name, but has been unsubscribed. You can delete the podcast's name from the list if you choose by selecting and press delete.

Finally, it is worth noting that you can use iTunes to browse any of the podcast sites, such as Podcast Alley, until you have the URL of an interesting podcast feed. Copy this address, and the way you paste it into iTunes, uses the menu Advanced > Subscribe to Podcast...                                  

Educational / Classroom Uses for Podcasting

More Information on Podcasting (More Details)

B&H Newsletter on Podcasting Gear

GarageBand 3 Podcasting QuickStart (My own compilation of notes)

Apple's GarageBand 3: Getting Started (98 page step by step lessons on working with GarageBand)

Apple's GarageBand Support: Working with Webcasts

Podcast + Videocast Essential Training, Notes from Garrick Chow

Steve Gilbert's Exploration Guide:  Educational Uses of
Blogs, Wikis, RSS Feeds, etc.

Podcasting Tools

Mikes and Headphones

Audio Interfaces and Mixers (your sound card should support 16-bit/44 kHz audio)

USB Audio Interfaces:

Digital Recorders:

Audio Recording Software (recording,editing, processing, mixing, and mastering)