The broadcaster in you

Podcasting can give anyone an opportunity to be a broadcaster. The definition of a podcast is a digital recording of radio broadcast or similar program that can be downloaded via the internet to be played on your computer or on a personal audio player – an iPod.
There are a couple of ways to download podcasts. You can find a show that you are interested in and download an individual episode of that show or you can subscribe to that show and have future episodes automatically downloaded to your computer. You can set your preferences to keep as many podcasts as you like. If you have an iPod that you will be downloading to periodically, you can set preferences for instance to download all or only certain shows.
Podcatching software is a term used for helping to download and listen to podcasts. For creating podcasts the term podcasting software is used. There are many podcatching sites that have podcast directories that organize podcasts to help you search through thousands of shows to find what you are interested in. Some examples of these sites are Podcastalley.com, ipodder.org, techpodcasts.com, podcast.net, and podcastbunker.com.
I used Juice as my podcatching software and connected iTunes as my podcast player. You can use windows media and other players but iTunes is pretty easy. I am now subscribing to several podcasts and a music channel.
Even though I have downloaded a podcast series of a TV program and also put it my iPod, I’ve learned a whole lot more (especially about subscribing) and can see myself using my iPod a whole lot more in the future for more than just music!
Before creating a Podcast there are some things to consider. What is the topic of the show, how long will it run, and will interviews be included. Next you need the proper equipment for putting everything together like a microphone, recording software, web cam. Your next step is hooking all the components up recording your show including music and effects. You’ll probably need to edit unless you are so good right off the bat you create the perfect podcast! And then you’ll want to convert to MP3 format. You will then be ready to publish and promote the podcast. Creating a RSS feed is necessary if you want people to subscribe to it.
A few more chapters and I might be convinced to do a podcast for my final project!