On air online

A personal Podcasting station

With Podcasting, you can have your own ideas voiced on the internet, more like a voice blogging. Adam Curry, the inventor of Podcasting says, the ease of it is in a microphone for verbal communication, a computer and an internet connection.

Podcast was derived from the words 'iPod' and 'broadcast', but an iPod is not necessary for Podcasting or listening to Podcasts. Curry, who invented this transmission through an iPod was deeply into naming this solution as the founder of Podcasting, but later on online writers including Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble, suggested reinterpreting the letters 'pod' as an acronym for "personal-on-demand" instead of a reference to a specific music player. Podcasting was also named as 'Audioblogs' initially.

More to its extension has been the inclusion of (Really Simple Syndication) RSS 2.0 XML format that can serve you with the latest news and features from various sources at your preference and directly to your personal computer rather than having to click from site to site. RSS is indeed very useful and intelligent, as it does not require you to visit the sites of your importance from time to time instead having an up-to-date delivery of information at your desktop. But for this purpose you need to have a Newsreader installed prior to enabling RSS from any website. Newsreaders may vary based on operating systems but they can be found on the internet. For example, a Windows based Newsreader named 'Newscrawler' can be found at newzcrawler.com.

RSS is becoming demanding as big time websites such as BBC, CNN and New York Times are adopting it and not to forget Blogs too.

Moving from RSS, a supplementary to Podcasting, we refer to some of the local Podcasting blogs and websites. A regular StarTech reader may recall Asif Imtiaz from our last week's review on blogs, a local blogger, who has also uploaded some of his Podcasts in his blogs at http://blogs.imtiaz.com. Using Podcasts he has uploaded his own views on the news he has reviewed in his blogs.

Unlike blogs, people even record music, songs in addition to their thoughts and then place them on the web.

According to Wikipedia, the American syndicated radio show Web Talk Radio became the first to adopt the format, in September 2004, followed within weeks by Seattle news radio station KOMO and by individual programs from KFI Los Angeles and Boston's WGBH.

The BBC began a trial in October 2004 with BBC Radio 5 Live's 'Fighting Talk', extending it in January 2005 to BBC Radio 4's 'In Our Time' and later to other shows. January 2005 also saw CBC begin a trial with its technology show 'Nerd'. US National Public Radio affiliates WNYC and KCRW adopted the format for many of their productions.

In May 2005, the trend began to go further with amateur Podcasts finding its demand for their blogspots. Many have taken blogs as an opportunity to practice news reporting and Podcasting being the voiced version could be a rehearsal for news presentation in radio or television. So what are you waiting for, go get your own Podcasting station ready.

An ideal Podcast station
A classic broadcast microphone
A laptop
Ear Buds
A mp3 player for recording .
Firewire audio in/out box.
iPod